


may your flame burn eternal

by dragonbagel



Series: gimme shelter [6]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (azula also isnt in this bc i refuse to do her dirty like that), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Mental Health Issues, The Search Comics (Avatar), the comic hurts but i have some Issues with it so we changin things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 42,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25765378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonbagel/pseuds/dragonbagel
Summary: Zuko receives the letter two months into his reign.‘Dear Fire Lord Zuko,’ it reads.‘I am writing to express my gratitude for the kindness you have bestowed upon my daughter, Kiyi...’or: zuko’s past comes knocking
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Ikem/Ursa (Avatar), Past Ursa/Ozai, Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), Ursa & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: gimme shelter [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867984
Comments: 398
Kudos: 1116
Collections: Fantastic A:TLA Fanfics!





	1. the letter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a short chapter to start things off, super excited to write this
> 
> it’ll make more sense if you read the series before this, but you do you i guess

Zuko receives the letter two months into his reign.

Technically, it’s Sokka who sees it first. Though the stuffy generals and council members that are perpetual pains in Zuko’s ass may see it as unprofessional, Sokka’s offer to sift through Zuko’s constant inundation of mail is a godsend. There’s enough work as it is, what with ending the war and all, and if he can steal even one extra hour of sleep, it’s more than worth it.

Ambassador Sokka—or, as he’s known behind closed doors, Zuko’s boyfriend—is surprisingly organized as he sorts his letters into various piles. Unlike Sokka’s messy chambers (which he spend suspiciously little time in), the three stacks of paper on Zuko’s desk are tidy and even labeled: Official Mail, Official Mail From Assholes So Not A Priority, and Fan Mail.

Zuko still thinks the third designation is ridiculous; Sokka thinks it’s a stroke of comedic genius.

“Half of my ‘Fan Mail’ is just people complaining,” Zuko had once protested.

“Yeah, and the other half are people talking about how awesome you are!”

He did, and still does, have a point; after Sokka removes the scornful letters (and burns them before Zuko can agonize over them), it’s surprisingly nice to see people actually complimenting him for once.

There are also, of course, the messages from would-be suitors, some of which are particularly...detailed. Sokka finds them hilarious, and Zuko knows for a fact that having the opportunity to read them is one of the reasons why Sokka sorts his mail in the first place.

“Hey,” Sokka says from his usual spot beside Zuko’s desk. “You should check this one out.”

He tosses the letter on top of the trade proposal Zuko’s currently reading; Zuko acts annoyed, as if he hasn’t been trying to read the same paragraph for half an hour.

“This better not be that lady talking about my arms again,” he huffs as he unfolds the parchment.

“Ah, the lovely Miss Ezo,” Sokka says with mock reverence. “Always so enamored by—what did she call it? Oh, right—your royal biceps.”

Zuko shoves Sokka playfully, who simply leans into Zuko’s side. Yet another reason he suspects Sokka sorts his mail: the opportunity to get into Zuko’s personal space whenever he wants.

“Just read it, jerkbender,” Sokka says, tilting his head so that it rests on Zuko’s shoulder.

“Agni, I’m going, I’m going,” Zuko mutters, rolling his eyes fondly before turning to the letter in his hands.

_Dear Fire Lord Zuko,_

_I am writing to express my eternal gratitude for the kindness you have bestowed upon my family. You saved my daughter Kiyi’s life once at the Boiling Rock, and again by warning us to leave the city._

_My husband says it is foolish to write this; I am sure you are busy, and you need not reply. However, we just received word that our old home was burned down soon after we left, and had it not been for your foresight, we would have surely perished._

_I am forever grateful for the kindness you have shown to my family. You are a most benevolent ruler, and should you ever find yourself in Hira’a, there will always be an open seat at our table._

_May your flame burn eternal._

_With Agni’s blessing,_

_Noriko, Your Loyal Subject_

Zuko reads the letter once, then reads it again. When he finally looks up, he sees Sokka smiling at him.

“Told you it was worth reading.”

Zuko flushes. “Yeah, I guess it was.”

What’s surely a dopey grin on Zuko’s face gives way to a yawn, and Sokka gently coaxes the letter out of his hand.

“I think it’s time to get you to bed, Your Majesty.” He stands, cracking his back before holding out his hand.

Zuko spares one last glance at the desk before taking Sokka’s hand with a sigh. “I suppose.”

“Come on,” Sokka says, leading him towards the bed. “Your boring papers can wait until tomorrow.”

“It’s not boring, it’s an important treaty,” Zuko replies as he climbs under the sheets.

Sokka snorts. “If you say so.”

He slides into bed beside him, stretching his arm out so that Zuko can nestle into his side. He pulls him closer, letting out an impressed whistle as Zuko extinguishes the low-burning lanterns with a flick of his wrist.

“That’s still so fucking cool.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zuko says, pressing his face against Sokka’s chest. “Less talking, more sleeping.”

Sokka kisses his forehead. “Your wish is my command, Mr. Fire Lord.”

“Call me Zuko,” he mumbles, eyes slipping shut. “Mr. Fire Lord was my father.”

He thinks he hears Sokka snicker as he succumbs to the unconsciousness tugging at his exhausted mind.

That night, he dreams of a soft voice teaching him to write his name by the turtle-duck pond. No matter how hard he tries, his messy script refuses to match the smooth calligraphy of his mother’s brushstrokes. As he squints at the characters, begging with a petulance he’d never dare use around Father, they blend together into an illegible mess. He apologizes—it’s his fault the ink runs like watercolors, and he’s so, _so_ sorry for ruining something so beautiful.

 _“It’s alright, my little prince,” his mother soothes_.

He wakes to the ghostly touch of a loving caress and a sickening sense of deja vu.


	2. yip yip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Officially, Fire Lord Zuko is in the midst of extremely private, uninterruptible negotiations with Suki regarding war reparations on Kyoshi Island.
> 
> Unofficially, Fire Lord Zuko is trying miserably not to puke over the side of Appa’s saddle.
> 
> or: aang & katara get involved, and zuko is not amused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for emetophobia. if you want to avoid, skip between the lines “ But Zuko, for once...” and “He groans, leaning back...” (i’ll put a summary in the end notes)

Sokka tells Aang about the letter the next day despite Zuko’s explicit instructions not to. Aang, as expected, immediately gabs to Katara, and then proceeds to annoy all three of them about how they just _have_ to go to Hira’a. He claims he heard about some funky spirit business going on in the area—“ _I am the bridge between worlds, you know”_ —so, really, it’s not like he'd be skipping out on his Avatar duties.

Zuko argues, over what has quickly become the longest lunch of his life, that the Fire Lord doesn’t have time in his busy schedule for nonsense like this. (Because even if the truth is closer to the fact that he’s just hesitant to witness even more of his father’s destruction, he sure as hell isn’t going to admit it to a thirteen-year-old.)

Sokka, the traitor, chimes in that actually, it isn’t too hard for Zuko to take time off, since he always seems able to find a break from work whenever Sokka happens to visit his chambers at night. He then has the audacity to _grin_ as Zuko turns red as a tomato, Katara gags, and Aang watches, confused.

“So,” Aang says, seemingly oblivious to the awkwardness Sokka injected in the air. “Does this mean we’re going?”

Zuko frowns. On the one hand, he really _does_ have a lot of work to do; on the other, Sokka’s raising an eyebrow like he’s preparing to say something even _more_ embarrassing, and the gears in Aang’s mind seem to be getting fired up for another barrage of pestering and begging.

(Now that Zuko thinks about it, Aang’s infectious enthusiasm and sheer stubbornness is probably the reason why Sokka spilled the beans to begin with.)

“Fine,” Zuko finally acquiesces with a groan. “Now can I please drink my tea in peace?”

Aang bows. “As you wish, Sifu Hotman.”

* * *

Officially, Fire Lord Zuko is in the midst of extremely private, uninterruptible negotiations with Suki regarding war reparations on Kyoshi Island.

Unofficially, Fire Lord Zuko is trying miserably not to puke over the side of Appa’s saddle.

“I forgot how bumpy this thing is,” Zuko mumbles, folding his arms and resting his forehead on them.

“He doesn’t mean that, buddy,” Aang says, patting Appa’s head beneath him. “You’re doing great.”

The sky bison just lows in response.

“Ah,” Sokka says, shifting to lay on top of Zuko’s back. “This makes me think of the good old days.”

Zuko sighs, not even bothering to try to shunt Sokka off of him. “My ship was _never_ this bad.”

“I call bullshit,” Sokka replies.

“Objection,” Zuko says, raising a finger in protest. “Only Toph can be the official lie detector.”

“No, Sokka’s right,” Katara chimes in, because of _course_ they’re ganging up on him. “It’s only fair that the title goes to someone else while Toph’s back in Ba Sing Se.”

“But he doesn’t have magic feet!”

Sokka laughs. “I don’t need magic feet. You’re a terrible liar, baby.”

“Don’t call me ‘baby’ when you’re using me as a chair,” Zuko mutters, burying his face deeper in his arms and hoping that nobody notices the sudden heat in his cheeks.

“Or _ever_ ,” Katara says. “It’s gross.”

“Oh, like you and Aang calling each other ‘sweetie’ all the time isn’t bad,” Sokka replies. “It’s way worse than anything me and _Zuko_ have ever done!”

“That’s rich, coming from the guy who didn’t realize tents weren’t soundproof before he—“

Zuko groans and resigns himself to wedging his face as far into Appa’s saddle as possible. Would it be hypocritical of him to pray away Katara’s affection after spending so long seeking it? Because really, in what world is it fair that she somehow embarasses him more _now_ than when she was kicking his ass across the globe?

Sokka, sounding equally as flustered as Zuko feels, tries to redirect the conversation away from an in-depth discussion of one of the most humiliating moments of both of their young lives.

“I think that’s Hira’a up ahead,” he says, loudly interrupting Katara; Zuko can only imagine the look she’s giving him. “If we can’t get there before sunset, though, we should land and make camp so— _Aang, what the fuck?”_

Zuko looks up at this, foregoing his efforts to disintegrate through Appa and plummet to a peaceful death. Sokka is frozen, and moves easily when Zuko nudges him aside to sit up fully.

“What?” he asks, glancing between the looks of alarm Sokka and Katara are sporting.

Then he spots Aang, who’s twisted around to stare at them. He clenches Appa’s reins with white knuckles, his face contorted into a bizarre glower.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Zuko asks, wilting slightly under the glare Katara shoots him.

Aang, as usual, doesn’t seem even remotely perturbed by Zuko’s bluntness.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I can’t help it! There’s something out there...some kind of spirit. I can feel its presence, especially in my face.”

Katara appears enraptured by his magical spirit mumbo-jumbo; Sokka just stretches his features into a similar glare, spreading his eyes wide with his fingers.

“Now that you mention it, I feel it too. That’s why I’m doing this!” He shakes his head from side to side, making what he refers to as his trademarked “spirit sounds.”

“Sokka, this is serious!”

“As serious as this?” Sokka replies, his face morphing into an exaggerated scowl.

“Knock it off,” Katara snaps.

Sokka looks to Zuko for support, but he shakes his head; why the hell would he ever put himself in Katara’s line of fire by _choice_?

“Whoa!” Aang shouts suddenly, blasting up with a gust of air to spin and land in a crouch on the edge of Appa’s saddle. “Did you guys see that giant wolf spirit? I think that’s the presence I’m feeling!”

Zuko, for one, didn’t see shit, because _someone’s_ airbending blew all of his hair into his face.

He manages to spit enough of it away from his mouth and eyes to see Sokka hook his fingers in the corners of his lips and pull them open as wide as possible, grinning.

“Did the wolf spirit look like this?” he asks, words nearly incomprehensible.

A spider-fly nearly the size of a pai sho tile seizes on this opportunity to fly directly into Sokka’s throat, leaving him choking and spluttering.

“Fuck! Shit! Ew!” he curses, coughing. Zuko thumps him on the back a few times, leaving him wheezing.

“Is it gone?” he asks, sticking his tongue out for Katara to inspect. “Please tell me it’s gone.”

“I don’t see anything,” Katara says. “Maybe you swallowed it.”

“ _What?_ ” Sokka shrieks.

Katara and Zuko snicker. Aang just makes a face.

Sokka huffs. “It’s not funny. At least _Aang_ isn’t laughing at my suffering!”

“That’s his _spirit_ face, remember?” Katara turns to Aang, placing a hand on his shoulder. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Aang’s lips twitch in and out of the strange grimace as though he’s trying to frown but simply can’t. “We should go look around. Something’s not right.”

“But we’re almost at Hira’a,” Sokka whines. “And I’m hungry!”

“You just ate a bug,” Zuko says. “You’ll be fine.”

“You’re on their side, too? No fair!”

“If you want me to throw up on Appa then, by all means, let’s keep flying. But if not…”

“Okay!” Sokka interrupts. “Okay, I get it, let’s land before my boyfriend pukes fire all over us.”

Katara looks to Zuko in thanks for supporting Aang, who probably would be as well if his face wasn’t still stuck in a permanent glower.

But Zuko, for once, finds he isn’t lying to earn the approval of his former enemies; the second Appa touches down, Zuko scrambles off the saddle, falls to his knees in a small patch of bushes, and retches.

He tries to hold back his hair—out of its usual topknot in an attempt to conceal his frustratingly recognizable face—but some of the long strands hang free. They catch on the sweat beading on his temple, sticking even more insistently to his forehead.

“Hey.”

Sokka’s voice is soft, gentle as the fingers slowly easing away the hair plastered above his brow. He replaces Zuko’s attempt at a human ponytail with his own hand, combing and smoothing his hair before tying it back.

Zuko gags a few more times, his throat spasming so intensely that he keels forward, managing to brace his hands before landing in his own bile.

He groans, leaning back to sit on his heels. His throat feels raw, and tears prick at the corner of his functional eye. Sokka’s hand is warm where it rubs comforting circles on his back.

“Sorry you had to see that,” Zuko rasps.

Sokka’s hand shifts from Zuko’s back to his upper arm, slowly pulling him up to stand. “Why didn’t you tell us you weren’t feeling well?”

“I did.”

“I thought you were just being dramatic!” The sudden high squawk of Sokka’s voice makes Zuko’s head throb, and he closes his eyes with a wince.

“Sorry, sorry,” Sokka whispers.

“It’s okay.” Zuko slowly peels his eyes open to meet Sokka’s, which are wide with concern. “I didn’t realize it was that bad until, well…”

He winces as he gestures to the ground.

“Eh, it happens to the best of us.”

“But I’m _royalty_ , not some lowly—“ Zuko slaps a hand over his mouth, then lowers it, shaking. “Fuck, sorry, I didn’t mean—“

_I didn’t mean to sound like my father._

He waits for the anger, for the reprimand he’s beyond certain he deserves. But…there’s nothing.

Zuko blinks. “Aren’t you angry with me?”

Sokka shakes his head. “Should I be?”

“Yes!” He winces as his voice cracks on the word. “No. I don’t know!”

“Zuko, you’re sick. It’s not your fault.”

“But I’m not sick! If I was sick, everything would be _fine_!”

Sokka frowns, and Zuko realizes that he simply doesn’t understand; that if Zuko explains it all more clearly, Sokka will stop being so weirdly _calm_.

“I don’t have any...illness,” he begins, slowly testing the terrain of Sokka’s comprehension. “It’s just an emotional weakness.”

The confusion still prominent on Sokka’s face is beginning to grate on him. Is this how Father used to feel when dealing with him all the time?

“I’m weak on the inside, okay? And because I’m not strong enough to—to deal with it, shit like this happens!”

“So, let me get this straight,” Sokka says after a moment. “You think you’re weak for having feelings?”

Zuko nods eagerly— _Finally._

“You know that’s fucked up, right?”

“I—no it’s not.”

Sokka takes Zuko’s hands, tugging him closer. “Yes, it is.”

Zuko dares to look up at him after a breath (because there’s still a chance he’s just playing Zuko for a fool), and the air catches in his lungs. “Your hair.”

“Huh?” Sokka glances to the side, as if only just noticing the hair framing the edges of his face and landing just atop his shoulders. “Oh, well, you didn’t have a hair tie, so…”

He shrugs, and makes as though to turn away; Zuko places a gentle hand on his cheek to stop him. “You look good.”

Zuko slowly takes some of Sokka’s hair and tucks it behind his ear, fingers tracing the curve of the cartilage. His vision is still a little fuzzy with traitorous tears, but he’s pretty sure Sokka is...smiling at him?

“You can keep the hair tie, you know,” Sokka says. “I’m sure Katara has another one I can use.”

“It’s okay,” Zuko says, slowly removing the band of leather holding his hair up. “I don’t think I’m ready for everyone to see me yet.”

Sokka doesn’t break eye contact, not even as he takes the tie from Zuko and styles his hair into the usual wolf-tail. “Is that what’s got you all out of sorts? People seeing you?”

“I haven’t left the palace since my coronation,” Zuko admits. “What if my people hate me?”

“You do realize ‘your people’ literally invited you here, right?”

Zuko looks away.

“You ended the war, Zuko. You’ve saved all these people.”

“Yeah, well,” Zuko swallows, “My father thought he was saving them, too.”

Zuko flinches at the chill of Sokka’s fingers under his chin, gently guiding his face upwards.

“You are nothing like Ozai.”

Sokka doesn’t blink as he says it, doesn’t have a smirk hidden behind too-sharp teeth. He’s telling the truth. ( _He’s not Azula.)_

Slowly, Zuko nods. Sokka presses a quick kiss to his forehead.

“Sorry, but your mouth is kinda…”

“Gross?”

Sokka grins. “Your words, not mine.”

He lowers his hand from Zuko’s face to intertwine their fingers instead. “Come on, we can’t leave those two lovebirds alone much longer.”

Zuko snorts, allowing Sokka to tug him back towards Appa.

“Hey, Katara! Can we snag some water for Zuko’s gross—“ He comes to a sudden standstill mid-shout, and Zuko slams into him.

“What the fuck?” Zuko staggers back, rubbing at his now-throbbing nose.

Sokka doesn’t answer, instead pulling out his boomerang.

“Sokka?” Zuko takes a cautious step around him, summoning a flame in his hand and shifting into a defensive stance.

He quickly realizes why Sokka froze.

“What in Agni’s name is _that?”_

His voice must carry, because Aang and Katara turn to look at him—and _away_ from the _massive fucking wolf_ looming behind them.

“Nice of you to finally show up!” Katara says, sarcasm almost as violent as the water whip she’s maneuvering.

“Oh, hey guys!” Aang, because he doesn’t have a single shred of self-preservation in his tiny body, waves at them before whizzing closer to the wolf on a ball of air. “We found the spirit!”

Zuko is overcome with the surge of protective irritation that Aang has a frustrating tendency to invoke, and begins to sprint towards him. He hears Sokka running behind him; well, that, or his heart is pounding way too fucking loudly.

“He must’ve left the spirit world for some reason,” Aang says as he nears. “So please, everybody be respectful!”

“Respectful?” Sokka squeaks.

Apparently, Zuko’s shitty hearing hasn’t betrayed him for once, because his idiotic boyfriend has managed to blow past him and barely dodge the snapping jaws of the wolf spirit—you know, like an _idiot._

“Your spirit just tried to bite my fucking head off!”

Zuko hurries to Sokka’s side, trying to place himself between him and the wolf. He finds himself practically beneath the spirit, its white underbelly nearly close enough to touch.

“Am I crazy,” Sokka says, “Or does that look like a face?”

Zuko follows his gaze to a patch of blue fur amongst the white, sharp lines forming a design that looks eerily similar to a glare.

“Aang, look!” Katara shouts. “That’s the face you’ve been making!”

She’s right, though the expression is much more intimidating on the massive murderous spirit wolf than the prepubescent teenager who wore it earlier.

“You’re right! I think I get it now.”

Said pubescent teenager then proceeds to propel himself ten feet in the air with a downward swing of his staff.

“Stop, giant wolf spirit! Listen to me!” he shouts, hovering at eye level with it. “I felt your presence earlier, see? Just like the design on your fur!”

He contorts his face back into the strange glower, gesturing to it excitedly. Zuko may not be an expert animal-whisperer, but he’s pretty sure the wolf isn’t amused.

“I knew you were here because I’m the Avatar, the Great Bridge between the Spirits and the humans! We were on our way to Hira’a when one of our friends got a little...sick.”

“Seriously?” Zuko mutters.

“If we’ve disturbed you,” Aang continues, “Please accept our apologies.”

The wolf—as anyone with more than two brain cells could have predicted—is not in the mood for apologies. It lunges forward with a growl, forcing Aang to leap backwards.

“I don’t think this whole ‘respectful’ thing is working,” Zuko says, reigniting his fists.

He shoots a blast towards the wolf’s face as Katara launches a barrage of ice, Sokka’s boomerang not far behind.

The boomerang bounces off of its forehead uselessly, and the spirit doesn’t even flinch at Katara’s frozen shards. Then…

“Did that wolf just _eat_ my fucking fire?”

“And burped,” Sokka says, catching his boomerang as it returns to him. “It ate your fire and it _burped_ at you.”

“Come on!” Aang shouts, drawing the spirit’s attention away from them. “I’m the Great Bridge! You don’t wanna—“

Aang’s pitiful attempt to reason with a being that _clearly_ isn’t interested in his whole Avatar spiel is interrupted by Appa’s roar as he charges at the wolf.

Sokka cheers. “Hell yeah! Giant spirit animal mega-brawl!”

“Go easy on him, buddy!” Aang yells. “We just want a peaceful passage to Hira’a!”

Appa ignores him as he launches himself forward, spinning sideways and whacking the wolf with his tail. The force of it sends the wolf reeling, and another flying kick knocks it to the ground.

“Sky bison: one, fire-eating wolf: zero!” Sokka says, pumping his fist in the air excitedly.

Zuko wholeheartedly shares his enthusiasm; Aang does not.

“Appa, I told you to go easy on him!” He turns to the wolf. “Are you okay, big giant wolf spirit?”

The spirit opens its mouth and launches a swarm of—are those _moth-wasps?_

“What the fuck?” Sokka shouts. “You are the grossest spirit _ever_!”

Zuko is inclined to agree, though his disgust quickly morphs into fear as the moth-wasps surround Sokka.

“Ow!” he yelps. “Did they eat my arm? I can’t see my fucking arm!”

“Try not to hurt them! They’re spirit creatures!”

Even Katara seems to be fed up with Aang’s peaceful spirit bullshit at this point. “Aang, it’s getting hard to breathe. We need to do something!”

“I know! But if you hurt them, things might get worse!”

“How the hell can things get _worse_?” Sokka yells.

Aang doesn’t have an answer, instead beginning to throw a torrent of air and rocks at the moth-wasps. Zuko follows with blasts of fire, tapping into his inner flame and punching forward with all the strength he can muster.

It doesn’t do jack shit.

If anything, the insects begin to buzz louder, stinging all of them with abandon. It’s infuriating and, more importantly, hurts like a bitch.

“Now would be a great time to go into the Avatar state!” Zuko shouts.

Aang looks helpless as he turns to him. “I can’t!”

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Zuko snaps.

“They’re spirits! It’s like my body just refuses to fight them!”

Great. They have a useless Avatar, a waterbender who can’t seem to make a dent in their attackers, a non-bender armed with nothing but a boomerang…and Zuko.

He realizes, with a sickening sense of clarity, what he has to do. He forces away the anxiety roiling in his gut, focusing on nothing but the chi glowing inside him.

_“To bend lightning, one must be completely balanced.”_

Zuko knows lightning. He knows the surge of energy passing into one hand and redirected out the other. He knows the sizzling feeling of electrocution, of the bolts trapped in his chest and seizing his heart. He knows the cruelty of his father as he harnessed its power, the coldness in his eyes and murderous intent. He knows the unhinged, crazed look on Azula’s face as she sent it cracking towards Katara.

When it comes summoning it though, tapping into its power himself…this is uncharted territory. Part of him isn’t even sure he can do it.

But Katara and Aang are scared, they’re just _kids_ , and Sokka’s howling and cursing in pain and he _has to do something_.

“Get down!” he shouts.

He sees the confusion on his friends’ faces—they’re his friends, he owes them, and they’re _hurting_ —and waits until they hit the ground (because they trust him, and isn’t that a fucking concept) before inhaling deeply. He widens into the stance he’s seen Uncle take before, grinding his feet into the dirt beneath him.

He feels the energy swirling around him, the cool fire in the air both unfamiliar and strangely _right._ The power settles deep within his bones, surging as he sweeps his hands in a circle and draws the electricity from the air.

The static crackles. It’s intoxicating.

He closes his eyes, and thinks of Sokka. He thinks of his warm hands, his infectious laugh, the security of his arms around him.

He is grounded. He is balanced. _He can do this._

He opens his eyes, exhales, and _pushes_.

The lightning surges from his fingertips, rocking through his body in a strange combination of pain and exhilaration. It strikes the moth-wasps, sending them scattering. The wolf spirit flees behind them.

 _They’re safe. He did it._ He lets the electricity fizzle from his hands, his energy vanishing along with it. He feels drained, his legs jelly beneath him. He sways.

The look of fear on Sokka’s face as he runs towards him, arm outstretched, is the last thing Zuko sees before falling into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you skipped that section: zuko basically gets sick bc of anxiety and sokka comes to comfort him
> 
> i realized i kinda wrote myself into a corner by not having azula here, but i firmly believe there’s no way a master bender like zuko can’t bend lightning


	3. the aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world around Zuko comes back in a blur. His eyes feel heavy, and when he cracks them open, he can only see shadows.
> 
> or: zuko and lightning, past and present

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for flashbacks to (canon) abuse

The world around Zuko comes back in a blur. His eyes feel heavy, and when he cracks them open, he can only see shadows.

He is no stranger to blindness, but this particular sensation is unsettling. It’s like a veil over his pupils; like the sight is still there, just hidden.

His other senses are similarly out of whack. His ears feel stuffed with cotton, and his limbs seem to have lost all sensation. He hears what he thinks are voices, but they’re too garbled for him to make out.

His mind buzzes as he hangs there, suspended between consciousness and whatever numb abyss he’s been sinking into. He knows he needs to wake up somehow—the neverending string of assassination attempts he’s faced since his coronation have instilled a (very reasonable) fear at the thought of being caught unaware.

His body, exhausted and utterly drained, is doing everything in its power to keep him disoriented and immobile. He is cold, and tired, and weak, and he yearns for even the slightest bit of warmth.

The need for his element is growing, his chi begging to be replenished. The ache spreads beyond his body, reaching out in hungry tendrils until— _there._

Though he can’t see it, he can dimly feel the flickering of flames nearby. They’re small, unnaturally so, and Zuko hopes he doesn’t extinguish them as he prepares to call the heat towards him.

He inhales—and he _gags._

The smell of burnt flesh assaults his nostrils, and suddenly he can’t breathe. All he can taste is smoke in his lungs, ash searing down his throat and raging through his veins like a wildfire. He can almost see it snaking around his bones, blue and crackling and _bright_.

It burns, but not like fire—like _ice._

The voices are getting louder now, and Zuko tries to force his eyes open further. He needs to figure out what the fuck is going on and _escape,_ because the rot of flesh is sickening and someone is burning—maybe, _probably,_ him—and there’s ash on his tongue and Agni, he can’t do this again.

There’s a hand in his periphery, inching closer to his face ( _p_ _lease, Father),_ fingers splayed _(I meant you no disrespect)_ wide enough to swallow his eye whole.

Zuko knows what comes next; or maybe, based on the stench of melted skin and singed hair, it’s already happened.

_(Rise and fight, Prince Zuko!)_

He flinches backwards, raising his arms to shield himself. Because he is a coward, dishonorable; a disgrace to Sozin’s line.

_(I won’t fight you!)_

His body is frozen, paralyzed and out of his control and there’s a pressure on his wrist ( _you will learn respect)_ trying to tug it away from his face ( _and suffering will be your teacher_ _)._

“Please,” he begs, voice hoarse.

He would be groveling, if he had the strength to move; he would throw himself at Father’s feet, begging for forgiveness he knows he doesn’t deserve.

_(I am your loyal son I am your loyal son I am your loyal son)_

“—your loyal son, I am your loyal son, please, _please_.”

He isn’t sure when his jumble of thoughts become words choking past his lips, or if he’s even made a sound to begin with. His cheek feels wet, and he can barely breathe, far past the point of hyperventilation.

“Zuko?” The sound of his name is the first coherent enough to flit through the haze in his brain.

He jerks upright, eyes roaming wildly. He still can’t see much, and rapidly blinking just leaves pops of blue light exploding in the shadows.

“Zuko, can you hear me?” The voice is feminine; not his father, then, but the next worst thing.

“Azula?” he croaks.

“Uh, no. It’s Katara.”

“Oh.” 

He swallows, the motion grating on his dry throat like a knot of barbed wire. It sends him into a coughing fit, body spasming in time with his lungs and sending flares of pain through his nervous system. It zaps through him like…

”Lightning.” Zuko brings a hand to his temple, massaging it as his wits slowly filter back to him. “Agni, I bent _lightning_.”

“And gave yourself a concussion.”

As more of the fog in his mind clears, Zuko manages to bring his right eye into a state of relative functionality. It’s nighttime; _how long was he out?_ He’s vaguely able to make out Katara—though blurred around the edges—sitting in front of him, a ring of water encircling her right hand.

“You were trying to heal me,” Zuko says, wincing, “when I freaked out, weren’t you?”

Katara nods. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were that out of it.”

“It’s fine. You can, uh, finish it now. I’ll quit acting like a baby.”

“You aren’t acting like a baby.” Sokka’s voice is _way_ closer than Zuko expected, and he jolts in what he now realizes is, in fact, Sokka’s lap. His head spins at the whiplash.

“Sorry,” Sokka says, looking sheepishly at Katara.

His sister just huffs before bending the water from the pouch at her hip into a glove, bringing it slowly to Zuko’s forehead. He forces himself not to flinch—he knows Katara, she’s healed him before—as the water makes contact, beginning to glow.

From his angle, the blinding turquoise looks like lightning.

The pressure in his skull lessens as Katara continues to work, dimming into a barely-there headache by the time she retracts her hands.

“There,” she says, bending the water back into its container. “That’s probably the best I can do for now.”

Zuko nods, pleasantly surprised that the action doesn’t trigger a wave of vertigo. “Thanks.”

“If you’re okay, I’m going to check on Aang.”

She glances over to where Aang is hunched over a campfire, slowly coaxing it back to life. Zuko pours a bit of his energy into it so that it doesn’t flicker out; it’s only fair, considering he stole the fire from it in the first place. Aang glances up as the flames rise with Zuko’s breath, meeting his gaze for a moment before looking back down.

It is then that Zuko remembers that he is not the only one who’s felt Azula’s lightning rage through his body.

“Shit,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Katara shakes her head as she stands. “You were saving us. Aang knows that. He’s just a bit...shaken up.”

Zuko doesn’t know what to say to that, so he simply watches as Katara walks over to the fire. He turns away when she puts her hand on Aang’s shoulder to give them some privacy; he owes them at least that much.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Sokka says, beginning to run his fingers through Zuko’s hair. “He’ll be begging you to teach him how to do it in no time.”

“Well, he’s going to be disappointed when he realizes I have no fucking clue.”

“What?” Sokka stares down at him in shock. “You’re saying you’ve _never_ bent lightning before?”

Zuko shakes his head. “I’ve only redirected it.”

“And you thought _now_ was the best time to try?” His voice has squeaked up nearly half an octave at this point.

“What was I supposed to do? Let you get killed by moth-wasps?”

Sokka frowns, which confuses the hell out of Zuko.

“The least you could do is thank me,” he tries.

Sokka doesn’t even humor him with a laugh. “You bent lightning...for _me_?”

Oh. _Oh._

“I mean—I meant the collective ‘you,’ like—like, all of you, you know?”

“No, you didn’t.”

Zuko is too tired to protest. “No, I didn’t.”

Sokka looks at him for another moment before shaking his head fondly. “You’re an idiot.”

“Is that news to you?”

Sokka snorts. “Not really.”

“Am I still concussed, or did you _actually_ laugh at my joke?”

“First of all, it was a _chuckle_ at best.”

“Uh huh,” Zuko says, lifting his head out of Sokka’s lap with a groan.

“Hey!” Sokka protests.

“Don’t worry,” Zuko says as he stands the rest of the way up, “You can play with my hair again later.”

He holds a hand out to Sokka, who takes it with a groan. “Fine, but I’m holding you to that.”

Zuko rolls his eyes. “Let’s go make sure I didn’t traumatize Aang too badly.”

“He’s talking to his ‘ _sweetie_ ’,” Sokka says, gesturing towards the fire. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Sure enough, Aang and Katara are chatting (though about what, he’s too far away to hear) and engrossed in what looks like a staring contest.

“The two of them give me the oogies,” Sokka says.

“The _oogies_? Seriously?”

“That’s my sister!” Sokka protests.

“Come on,” Zuko says, elbowing Sokka when he dramatically shudders beside him. “She can do a whole lot worse than the Avatar.”

Sokka mutters something that sounds suspiciously like _“stupid fucking Jet,”_ and Zuko pretends it doesn’t make his face heat with embarassment. (He was a reckless, hormonal teenager, okay? Not that he isn’t now…)

“We’re back!” Sokka shouts as they reach the campfire. “So you two better not be doing anything gross!”

Katara glowers at him, turning away from Aang. “You guys are _literally_ holding hands.”

Zuko glances down and, yup, they are most definitely holding hands. _Huh. When did that happen?_

Sokka yanks his hand back, flinging it in the air. “No we’re not!”

The way his voice cracks as he says it doesn’t really help their case.

Katara fixes them with a knowing look, and Zuko takes it upon himself to redirect the conversation before his boyfriend can embarrass them both further.

“Aang, I apologize if I scared you. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay. You saved us...when I couldn’t.” The genuineness in Aang’s expression still manages to throw Zuko for a loop, despite how long he’s known him.

“That wasn’t your fault, Aang,” Katara says, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“But I’m the Avatar,” he protests. There’s no real heat behind his words; really, Aang just sounds _tired._

“Well, Mr. Spirit-Bridge,” Sokka says, “Sometimes you have to let the rest of us do something cool for a change.”

Zuko snorts; Katara looks murderous.

Aang doesn’t say anything for a moment, but then propels himself to his feet with a gust of air and a laugh. “I guess you’re right!”

He steps closer to Zuko, practically hovering a few inches off the ground in excitement. “So, Sifu, when are you going to teach me to lightning-bend?”

“Told you so,” Sokka snickers.

Zuko smacks his palm against his forehead, electing to ignore Sokka. “Never.”

“But it’s so cool,” Aang whines.

“I already taught you how to redirect it.”

“That’s not the same!” The pout on Aang’s face would make Zuko feel bad, if not for his next words.

“Besides, it’s probably because of me that you can do it in the first place! Well, because of Roku.” He scrunches his nose, tilting his head thoughtfully. “But _I’m_ Roku, so I think it counts.”

“ _Aang,”_ Zuko hisses.

The kid has the audacity to not be even remotely ashamed to bring up a fact they both agreed _never to talk about._

“Holy shit, you’re related to Roku?!”

Zuko glares at Aang; this is _exactly why_ it was supposed to be a secret.

He can see the gears turning in Sokka’s head, and has already resigned himself to his miserable fate when Sokka shares his newest revelation. “I thought Sozin was your grandfather.”

“Great-grandfather, actually,” Aang corrects. _Cheeky bastard._ “But Sozin was on _Ozai’s_ side of the family.”

His voice hardens for a moment on Ozai’s name; Zuko, because he has _actual respect_ for others, doesn't mention it.

“It was a political thing,” he says instead, blushing. “Roku and Sozin’s lines…”

“Oh, Spirits, this is _too good_.” Sokka doubles over in laughter, grabbing Zuko’s arm to keep from falling over.

“Knock if off.” Zuko attempts to dislodge Sokka’s grip on him, but he clings like a pentapus.

“Now, now, young whippersnapper,” Aang chides; he’s lowered his cadence to his ‘old man voice,’ any previous Ozai-related emotions forgotten. “Is that any way to speak around your elders?”

Even Katara has started to laugh now, and Zuko wants the ground to swallow him.

“Is _that_ any way to speak to...the guy you want to teach you to, uh, bend lightning?”

Sokka pats his arm. “Good effort.”

Zuko flushes, and most definitely does not huff smoke and stomp away towards Appa.

_Definitely not._

“At least you won’t bully me,” he grumbles, bringing his hand up to pet the bison’s wet nose.

Appa tilts his head down in what Zuko hopes is agreement, and then proceeds to betray him by opening his giant mouth and licking Zuko from head to toe.

“Eugh!” Zuko splutters, trying to shake the disgusting gunk off of him.

He hears his companions giggling nearby. “It’s not funny! You’re—you’re all a bunch of traitors!”

This only makes them laugh harder. Zuko groans, tilting his head up towards the moon—the embarrassing memory of _“that’s rough, buddy”_ flitting unbidden through his mind—and asks the Spirits for the millionth time why they’ve forsaken him.

They answer by sending Momo to land on his shoulder and begin to slurp at the slobber on his face.

_“Seriously?!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we do be using humor to cope tho
> 
> (more actual plot coming up next!)


	4. brothers, sisters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The doctors say Azula has been hallucinating about her. My mother—I mean, our mother, that is.”
> 
> He feels Sokka shift, but keeps his eyes closed; if he opens them, he’ll definitely lose his nerve to speak.
> 
> or: what happened to azula

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for allusions to child abuse & discussion of mental illness

They decide to make camp outside for the night. Well, technically, Katara bullies them all into resting by lecturing about the importance of sleep and food on long journeys the second they’d passed the threshold of immediate danger. Even Sokka, Master Schedule-Keeper, agrees to leave the remainder of the trek to Hira’a for the next morning. (Secretly, Zuko thinks it’s just a ploy to get Katara to shut up.)

The routine is one of familiarity and, surprisingly, comfort. For a moment, eating around the fire, Zuko can imagine he’s back on Ember Island, practicing katas with Aang in the sand and free of the weight of a nation on his shoulders. But this war has aged them, and continues its assault on them even after its end. Tonight, burdened with unwanted memories and that ever-present sense of responsibility, there are no stories, nor any butchered attempts at jokes; there is simply the need to _rest,_ an aching weariness beyond the body itself.

They’re quiet as they unload the bedrolls from Appa’s saddle, passing them out other wordlessly. Zuko, as is unspoken tradition, takes his last.

He watches as Katara lays her bedding out at her feet and immediately collapses onto it, apparently even more exhausted than Zuko had realized. Beside her, Aang goes through a weird mental calculation that involves looking between Sokka and Katara until his eyes cross before awkwardly setting up his blankets a few meters away. He continues to exchange weird looks with Sokka as he lays down, and Zuko doesn’t have the energy to even _begin_ to unpack that.

Instead, he tries to find the patch of land least likely to house disgusting and dangerous insects. He knows, from (unfortunate) past experience, that nature will inflict its itchy, biting torture regardless of where a sap like him decides to lay their head.

He forces thoughts of creepy-crawlers out of his head as he lays down, trying to get comfortable. He can feel the tiredness settling deep in his bones, the tug of sleep darkening the corners of his vision. Yet even with the calming chirp of cicada-crickets and soothing breeze, the constant flash of blue every time he closes his eyes keeps him infuriatingly awake.

Insomnia, it seems, is an old, twisted friend he’ll never shake off.

But Sokka, who dozes off even in the most inconvenient places, not sleeping? That’s a new one.

“Why are you still up?”

Sokka shrugs, taking a seat beside Zuko, who’s moved from his bedroll to sit beside the campfire. “I drank a ton of water trying to get the taste of moth-wasp out of my mouth, so now my bladder’s—“

Zuko winces, holding up a hand to cut him off. “Okay, okay, I get the picture.”

Sokka just shoots him a grin before turning to stare at the stars. They fall into silence, and Zuko reaches out to scoop a small flame out of the fire. He lets it flicker in his hand, rising and falling with his breath.

“Little cold tonight, isn’t it?”

The flame jumps for a moment before settling. “Uh, I guess. I thought you liked it cold, Water Tribe.”

Sokka elbows him gently. “It’s your fault for being so warm all the time.”

“That’s what you get for dating a firebender.”

Sokka snorts, pressing a kiss to Zuko’s cheek before standing up and walking over to his unused bedroll. It’s blue, of course, and flaps in the light breeze as he carries it over to Katara, who’s curled up against one of Appa’s legs, shivering. He gently drapes the blanket over her, and she immediately hugs in closer to her body. Zuko can see the tips of Momo’s ears peeking out next to her pillow, and tries not to pray for the gremlin’s untimely death by suffocation.

Sokka chuckles as he sits back down next to Zuko. “Are you really still mad at Momo?”

“No!” Zuko splutters, trying to school his expression into something ideally less scornful. “I just...don’t like his disgusting little tongue.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Sokka replies, looking over at the lemur with something grossly similar to fondness. “She’s a lot less terrifying when she’s asleep.”

“I thought Aang said Momo was a, uh, male lemur?”

Sokka blinks, then slaps a hand over his mouth to muffle his sudden burst of laughter. “I was talking about my _sister,_ dumbass.”

“Oh.”

He doesn’t really know what else to say, so he waits, cheeks burning, for Sokka’s ongoing laughter to die down. It takes longer than it should, especially considering it wasn’t _that_ funny.

“After all those snowballs to the forehead,” he muses, glancing at Katara, who clutches the blanket even in sleep, “you still look out for her.”

“Well, duh,” Sokka replies. “I throw witticisms at her, she throws snowballs at me. The relationship works.”

“Seems to me like you’re getting the short end of that deal.”

Sokka shakes his head with a small smile. “She’s my sister. When it comes to her, I don’t mind getting the short end of the deal.”

“Huh,” Zuko says, lowering his gaze to stare at the flames once again. “I think Azula and I were like that, once.”

Sokka raises an eyebrow.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” he continues, “considering how she is now. But things were different, when we were kids.”

“What happened?”

“My father,” Zuko says, chuckling mirthlessly. “What else?”

“Okay, I should have seen that one coming,” Sokka replies.

“She was always his favorite.”

Out of the corner of his right eye—because that’s where Sokka sits when they talk, because he actually wants to _converse_ with Zuko, as bizarre as that sounds—he sees Sokka scoot closer until their shoulders are touching.

“He pitted us against each other. She was always the better bender—the better heir, really. I was just lucky enough to be born first.”

Zuko twists his lips, frowning into the fire. “He said, once, that Azula was born lucky, and I was lucky to be born.”

He holds his hand up to shush Sokka before he can protest. “And I know it was wrong, now. I just—the only person who ever believed in me then was my mother.”

“Iroh told me a little bit about her,” Sokka says softly, leaning his head against Zuko’s shoulder. “And about the turtle-duck pond.”

Zuko sighs; _leave it to Uncle to overshare._

“We spent a lot of time there. Azula...wasn’t often invited.”

“Why?” Sokka asks, voice playful. “Did she scare off all the turtle-ducks?”

“Yeah, actually.” Zuko winces as he remembers the little chicks scattering in fear as Azula threw rocks at them, the mother turtle-duck quacking angrily before swimming after them. “But I don’t think she ever liked my sister very much.”

“No offense, Zuko, but she _is_ a little,” Sokka points to the side of his head, spinning his finger in a circle, “wacko.”

“She’s still my sister,” Zuko says, the words coming out more harshly than intended.

Sokka drops his hand quietly down to his lap.

“And to have father’s favor...” Zuko swallows; he thinks of burning fists and meaningless quests and cold, dark eyes. “It was the greatest honor.”

Sokka nods, but doesn’t say anything.

“I mean, I never did, and we all saw what happened to me,” he says with a snort; for some reason, Sokka doesn’t appear to find it nearly as amusing. “But I guess even though my mother’s disapproval was less, uh, _violent_ , it still fucked her up.”

He sighs, closing his eyes for a moment. He focuses on the heat in front of him, on Sokka at his side.

“The doctors say she’s been hallucinating about her. My mother—I mean, _our_ mother, that is.”

He feels Sokka shift, but keeps his eyes closed; if he opens them, he’ll definitely lose his nerve.

“Mai actually, uh, stopped by a few days ago after visiting Azula. She said my sister is...”

_“...a mess, Zuko. She thinks your mother is out to get her!”_

_“I don’t get it,” Zuko said, frowning into his tea. “Mother is gone.”_

_Mai bit her lip, shifting in her seat at the table beside him. “She doesn’t trust us after what happened at Boiling Rock, and she thinks we’ve been corrupted by Ursa.”_

_Zuko groaned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”_

_“It doesn’t_ have _to make sense. That’s just what Azula’s reality is right now.”_

 _Mai’s usually flat expression had morphed into one of indignation, a dare to challenge her that Zuko was_ not _going to take on._

_“Okay,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Then what—what do we do?”_

_“Right now, the best place for her is at the ranch to keep up with her therapy. The doctors say she’s making progress, and hopefully they can stop chi-blocking her soon.”_

_Zuko nodded slowly._

_“They’ve actually got her working with the ostrich-horses. It keeps her calm.”_

_Zuko tried to imagine Azula caring for an animal, or even just not actively trying to harm it. It was surprisingly hard._

_“Do you think I could...visit her, one day? Maybe with you and Ty Lee?”_

_Mai didn’t respond at first, instead holding her cup of tea out towards Zuko, who touched his fingers to it wordlessly; it began to steam after a moment, and Mai nodded in appreciation before taking it back._

_Zuko stared at her as she sipped at her tea. He knew from long years of being sort-of friends (sometimes more, sometimes less) with Mai that pushing her never ended well, but the silence was_ killing _him._

_“I don’t think that would be a good idea right now,” Mai said finally._

_“Why?” Zuko couldn’t help but ask. “Did she say something to you?”_

_“She thinks you stole the crown from her.”_

_“Oh,” Zuko said. “That isn’t too bad. And, technically, she’s sort of right.”_

_“She also thinks...that Ozai isn’t your father.”_

_Zuko blinked. “Why in Agni’s name would she think that?”_

_“She said something about a secret letter.”_

_“What secret letter? What the hell does that even mean?” Zuko didn’t mean to raise his voice, but there was a buzzing in his ears, and_ nothing made sense.

_“How should I know?”_

_“Well,” Zuko spluttered, because this_ could not _be happening, “Who_ is _my father then?”_

_“Hey, we don’t even know if this is true.”_

_“But what if it is?” Zuko asked, gripping the edge of the table. “Maybe_ that’s _why Father always hated me.”_

 _It made sense, in a sickening sort of way. Of_ course _he could never live up to his father’s expectations—he didn’t share his blood. Sozin’s power didn’t flow through his veins. He was a weak bender, and a weaker prince. And now, as Fire Lord, with a title he had no right to..._

_“Zuko, Ozai was an asshole.”_

_“It makes sense, though!” he protested. “He banished me to get me out of the line of succession.”_

_Mai sighed. “I didn’t tell you about this for you to get involved in her delusions too.”_

_“You’re right, you’re right,” he said, sighing. “You’re a good friend, Mai. I’m glad Azula has you.”_

_Mai’s lips twisted up slightly at the corners, her version of a smile. “You’re a good brother.”_

_Zuko wanted to protest. He wanted to say that_ good brothers _didn’t fight their sisters in Agni Kai’s, or ignore the slow breakage of their psyche, or cause their best friends to turn on them._

“You _are_ a good brother, you know.”

Zuko looks up from the flames, which he’d been watching flicker in and out of focus while he spoke, to see Sokka staring at him intently. The afterimage of the fire lingers over him with each blink, providing a small glimmer of protection from the intensity of those wide, blue eyes.

“I’m not,” he says, wringing his wrists. “I should have been there for her.”

“What, while you were banished?”

Zuko just shrugs. “I’m letting them chi-block her. I—what kind of brother does that make me?”

“You care about her,” Sokka says, as if Zuko hasn’t spent the past half hour explaining in excruciating detail why that is _not_ the case. “You were kinda out of it after she, y’know, shot you full of lightning, but people had some... _opinions_.”

“I know enough,” Zuko snaps. “I know they—I know they wanted to _kill her._ ”

“I was gonna say they wanted to throw her in jail, but yeah, that too.”

“So?”

“ _So,_ ” Sokka replies, as if speaking to a toddler, “You didn’t let that happen.”

“Yeah,” Zuko mutters. “And yet she _still_ hates me for it.”

Sokka groans. “Why can’t you just _accept_ that you did something good?”

“Because it doesn’t _feel_ good!” The fire flares as he yells, tampering down as he forces himself to breathe and matching each rise and fall of his chest.

He can’t hear past the ringing in his ears, the blood rushing through his veins. His inhales are ragged, tinged with smoke and the crippling knowledge that for all he tries to protect his family—to make them proud—nothing he does will ever, _ever_ be enough.

“I used to bully Katara.”

Zuko looks up abruptly; Sokka has a strangely unreadable expression on his face.

“I guess I was jealous, being a non-bender and all. I used to tell her she couldn’t fight because she was a _girl._ ”

Zuko thinks of Azula, the prodigy, the lone recipient of his father’s affection.

“When Dad left, he said I had to protect her,” Sokka continues, “But I just smothered her instead.”

He kicks at the dirt by his feet, sending some of it into the fire.

“And then, when we were traveling with Aang, I always felt like I had something to prove. I...still do.”

“You’re a brave warrior, Sokka,” Zuko says, placing a hand on his boyfriend’s shoulder.

“You’re just saying that,” Sokka replies, blushing.

“I’m not!” Zuko protests. “And your sister respects you a great deal.”

“Oh, I know she does,” Sokka says smugly, “But _never_ tell her that unless you _also_ want a snowball to the forehead.”

“Don’t worry, she’s already done _far_ worse,” Zuko grumbles.

Sokka chuckles. “Yup, that’s my sister.”

Zuko gives a small smile, but it soon slips into something closer to an unsure grimace. “Do you think Azula will ever forgive me?”

“If _Katara_ can forgive you, anyone can,” Sokka says with a snort.

Zuko nudges him. “I’m serious!”

“Okay, okay,” Sokka says, raising his hands in surrender.

“But what if I really did take her crown?”

Sokka frowns. “Zuko, you said it yourself: Azula’s unstable. Don’t you think ruling an entire nation would maybe, I don’t know, _make things worse_?”

“I guess,” Zuko admits.

“You got her help when no one else would. And when she gets better—which she _will_ —hopefully she’ll see that.”

Zuko just sighs.

“Give her time,” Sokka says, “Those healers have helped other people too, right? Like Tai Chi’s twin?”

 _“Ty Lee._ And they’re sextuplets, not twins.”

Sokka’s jaw drops. “They’re _what_?”

“Agni, that does _not_ mean what you think it does.”

“How do _you_ know what I—“

“It means there are six of them, okay?”

“Which is, uh, _totally_ what I thought!” Sokka stammers.

Zuko smacks himself in the face, groaning. “But yeah, Ty Lao had an...episode a few years ago, apparently. They found these healers because they’re chi-blockers, and Ty Lao could be violent.”

“What? Did she burn down any villages? Try to kill her brother multiple times?”

“It wasn’t multiple times,” Zuko mutters; the various occasions when Azula had pushed him off of trees and roofs and any other semi-high place didn’t _count_ , okay? “And Ty Lao’s violence was...self-directed.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Zuko says, exhaling shakily. “I didn’t hear about what happened until later because I was, you know…”

“Banished?” Sokka supplies. “Hunting innocent children?”

“Are you ever going to stop bringing that up? And he’s not _innocent_ , he’s the most powerful being alive!”

Sokka snorts. “Yeah, well, ‘the most powerful being alive’ just woke up because you don’t know how to communicate without yelling.”

Zuko whips around to see Aang stretching up with a yawn powerful enough to blow away the grass around him. He blinks, tilting his head as he looks towards the campfire.

“Sokka?” he asks, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Zuko?”

Sokka stands, dragging Zuko up with him.

“Hey, buddy,” Sokka says, crouching down by Aang. “Sorry to wake you.”

“Why are you two still up?”

“Because _someone_ ,” Sokka says, aiming a teasing glare at Zuko, “was out brooding.”

“I was not!”

Aang shrugs almost sheepishly. “Sorry, Zuko, but he’s kind of right.”

Zuko throws his hands up in annoyance. “Unbelievable!”

“Well, this has been a lovely chat,” Sokka says, interrupting what is _definitely not_ a temper tantrum in the making. “I think it’s time for all of us to go back to sleep.”

“Yeah, okay,” Aang agrees, smiling as he lays back down. “Night, everyone.”

He closes his eyes and, not even five seconds later, begins to snore.

“How the hell does he do that?” Zuko whispers.

“He learned from the best,” Sokka replies, patting his chest proudly. “Now come on, we should also get some shut-eye.”

“Fine.”

Zuko sighs as Sokka drags him towards the blankets he’d long abandoned, staring at them warily.

“You should sleep,” he says, sitting down next to the bedding instead of on top of it. “I’ll keep watch.”

Sokka shakes his head. “I’m not sleeping if you aren’t.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Zuko scoffs. “Besides, we only have one bedroll. I’ll be fine.”

He doesn’t let up his pointed stare, and Sokka finally crawls under the blanket with a fine litany of muttered curses.

Zuko rolls his eyes, trying his best to ignore the incessant sound of shifting fabric as Sokka tries to get comfortable.

“Ugh,” Sokka says dramatically, flopping on his back. “It’s so _cold._ ”

“You have a blanket.”

Sokka ignores him. “If only there was some sort of human furnace here to warm me up.”

“That’s a terrible pick-up line and you know it.”

“Come _on,”_ Sokka groans. “You don’t even have to sleep.”

Zuko glares. Sokka glares back, a small grin on his face in challenge.

And that smile... _Agni,_ Zuko is weak.

“Fine,” he says, slipping off his shoes and climbing onto the bedroll beside Sokka, who immediately latches onto his side like a koala-sheep.

“Mmm,” he sighs, wrapping his arms around Zuko and nuzzling closer. “Much better.”

“It’s not even that cold,” Zuko mutters, tearing his gaze away from the stupidly endearing look on Sokka’s face.

“Says you.”

“Yeah, says me.”

“Okay, we _really_ need to work on your comebacks.”

“It wasn’t a comeback!” Zuko retorts. “Just—just go to sleep, okay?”

Sokka hums, hopefully in agreement. “See you tomorrow, jerkbender.”

He tilts his cheek so that it rests flush against Zuko’s sternum and then, mere moments later, begins to snore. He doesn’t stir when Zuko tentatively wraps his arm around him.

The weight of Sokka’s body on his is calming, somehow making him feel lighter in a bizarre, paradoxical way. The breath on his collar grounds him, and he tries to match his own breathing to it. It’s slow, evening out ever so slowly like the pace of his heart that Sokka can undoubtedly hear.

Zuko feels his eyelids start to droop. He tries to keep them open—he did say he’d keep watch, after all—but he’s exhausted. Sokka’s even breaths, his peaceful expression—all of it pulls him deeper towards sleep until it’s too great to resist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone needs help finding treatment for mental health issues (in the us), call SAMHSA for free at 1-800-662-4357
> 
> anyways justice for azula she’s a literal child


	5. sunrise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko forces himself to power through the firebending forms; if anything, the extra burn in his limbs provides a welcome distraction to the fear worming its way through his heart.
> 
> or: zuko’s morning is far too eventful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for allusions to abuse, discussion of scars unrelated to self-harm & brief sort of suicidal ideation (see end notes for where to skip)

Zuko, as usual, wakes up hours before the rest of the group.

He doesn’t quite remember falling asleep—it must’ve been late, considering he’s still exhausted—but now, his head laying on Sokka’s chest, he doesn’t really mind. He allows himself a moment to simply rest, to listen to the slow beat of Sokka’s heart and his relaxed breaths.

It’s only when Sokka begins to snore directly in his ear that Zuko untangles himself from the bedroll, tucking the blanket against his boyfriend’s side in the spot he’d vacated.

His body immediately protests as he stands, muscles stiff and achy like he’d managed to run a marathon in his sleep. (Or, more accurately, like he’d bent lightning less than 24 hours ago.) He tugs his wrist above his head, relishing in the soft _pop_ of his spine. It’s followed by the quiet _crack_ of his shoulders as he stretches one arm across his body, then the other.

He still feels like hot garbage, but slightly-less-sore hot garbage is good enough for him. He knows he should probably meditate (especially after yesterday), considering he has at least a few hours before anyone else even deigns to open their eyes. Yet the thought of sitting still, counting his breaths, trying to avoid the anxiety steadily mounting within him—well, it isn’t exactly ideal.

He turns to face the sun as it crests over the horizon. The warmth is heavenly on his skin, and he can feel the rays of dazzling light healing him from within. The energy pulsing inside of him burns stronger, and on his next exhale he releases a flurry of sparks.

Making sure to put a sizable distance between himself and anything (or any _one_ ) flammable, Zuko begins to practice his firebending katas. It’s more draining than usual, likely leftover exhaustion from the day before. 

He forces himself to power through it; if anything, the extra burn in his limbs provides a welcome distraction to the fear worming its way through his heart.

The nerves are nothing new; neither is bending away his emotions. Toph once told him that the only time his heart stopped hammering like a jackrabbit was while he practiced (though with a few more insults and surprisingly creative curses thrown in along the way).

It’s still strange, though, to think of bending as a source of calm. Before he’d ( _f_ _ailed to save Uncle, lost everything he thought he wanted, felt his father’s lightning)_ met the Masters, his fire was just a manifestation of his rage ( _and jealousy and fear and shame)_. It was the only way to show emotion without being labeled ( _branded_ ) as weak.

But now…now, he finds peace in the movements, in the steady thrum of his chi. It’s a tranquility he once only gleaned from his swords and hidden behind a mask, where he could breathe free of the crushing weight of his father’s judgment.

He finishes his forms as the last specks of pink and purple fade from the sky. Sweat drips from his hairline and pools on his back, plastering his shirt uncomfortably close to his skin. It’s not exactly a regal look, or even a semi-respectable-to-wear-in-public one. 

He glances back at the camp; his companions, unsurprisingly, are still dead to the world. That gives him time to bathe...where, exactly? Katara could probably direct him to the water with some strange bending intuition, but dealing with the fallout of waking her would not be even _remotely_ close to worth it.

What was it that Uncle used to say about finding water when they wandered as refugees? 

_“Follow the footsteps of the animals. They know their home better than you and I.”_

Now that he thinks about it, that may have just been one of Uncle’s ridiculous proverbs to keep Zuko from setting the world (and himself) on fire. But it’s that or wandering aimlessly through the forest surrounding him, so he picks a direction and begins to walk.

* * *

Uncle’s proverb, Zuko decides, is bullshit.

The tracks he’d chosen to follow have only led in frustrating circles, as though the spirits-damned creature left them _just_ to spite him. It’s only after he passes the same tree _yet again_ that he realizes he maybe shouldn’t trust the survival advice of the man who brewed tea with a poisonous flower.

“Agni help me,” he mutters, straying from the muddy paw-prints for the sake of nothing short of sheer pettiness.

Branches scratch at his face as he trudges onward, grumbling angry to himself all the while. At this point, the trek isn’t even about the bath—it’s about the _principle_.

Finally, _finally,_ he stumbles upon a small pond in the middle of a clearing.

 _Only took 50 years_ , he thinks bitterly.

He makes quick work of stripping, leaving his clothes on the bank. The water is surprisingly pleasant as he steps in, barely even rippling as he wades deeper. It’s clear enough that he can see the curl of his toes as he squeezes and releases the sand beneath his feet.

He takes a deep breath, then submerges himself. Underwater, all is still and quiet, almost eerily so. He floats, suspended between the bottom of the pond and the surface. He is weightless, and utterly serene. His lungs burn, but the thought of leaving the water’s embrace—of _breathing_ —is oddly unappealing.

It reminds him of the time he nearly drowned as a child, of the time his father actually tried to _save_ his life instead of ending it. But these are not the tumultuous waves slamming into the shore of Ember Island, and he is not five years old and deluding himself with some fantastical notion of family.

He surfaces.

The air is cool as it hits his face, clinging to his hair and dripping in rivulets down his shoulders. He splashes his face a few times for good measure before trudging back to shore; if he hurries, he may be able to return to camp before anyone notices his absence and sends out a search party.

The pond is shallow enough that he can wade to the shore, but he stumbles over some sort of aquatic plant before he reaches the water’s edge. It’s weird and slimy and he’s _still_ shuddering at the thought of it, so much so that he nearly misses the bizarre-looking creature sitting on top of his clothes.

It looks like a flutter-bat, if flutter-bats had ominous eye-shaped patterns on their wings.

“Shoo!” he says, waving his hands in what he hopes is a threatening motion (as he’d rather not set any animals on fire today).

He manages to scare it away—but not before it grabs his shirt in its talons.

“Hey!” Zuko shouts, clambering the rest of the way out of the pond. “Get back here!”

The flutter-bat lets out a blood-curdling screech, narrowly avoiding the short blasts of fire he shoots at it as it flies out of sight.

Then, as if Zuko’s luck isn’t bad enough already, something wraps itself around his ankle and _pulls._

Zuko falls to the ground with a grunt, spinning around wildly to see a massive vine crawling its way up his shin. It doesn’t budge as he kicks at it, and retracts only when he sends a burst of flames out of his foot. He scrambles upwards the second he’s released, grabbing his remaining clothes and high-tailing it out of the forest.

 _Not today,_ creepy forest. _Not today._

* * *

He manages to slide his pants on once he’s sure nothing’s after him, haunted vine or otherwise. He finds he’s annoyingly still wet, both from the water and the fact that he’s sweaty yet again. (At this point, he’s too freaked out by nature’s attack to care.)

He resigns himself to channeling heat into his skin and steaming himself dry, praying to any god that will listen that he doesn’t smell _too_ gross.

When he reaches their makeshift campsite, he finds that the rest of Team Avatar is already awake and gathered around the fire. 

Sokka is the first to notice his arrival, and he waves Zuko over before frowning in confusion. “Uh, babe? Where’s your shirt?”

 _Great, now_ everybody’s _staring._

“A flutter-bat stole it,” he mumbles.

“What?” Sokka asks, and wow, is his boyfriend _actually trying to kill him with embarrassment?_

“I said a stupid fucking _flutter-bat_ stole it!”

The fire flares with his temper, and Katara and Aang, who had been studiously cooking breakfast (in a poor attempt to pretend they weren’t eavesdropping), jolt.

“What?” This time, it’s Katara’s turn to pose the question.

“Nevermind, I’m going to go change,” Zuko groans, heading towards Appa to grab his pack.

The sooner he gets this over with, the sooner they can get to Hira’a. (On second thought, maybe that isn’t such an appealing ultimatum.)

He’s still rooting around for his other clothes when Aang asks a question that knocks the wind out of him: “Zuko, what happened to your back?”

Zuko freezes for a moment before quickening his frantic digging as he shifts through their supplies. “Nothing.”

He knows what Aang must be seeing—he’s looked himself more than a few times, mapped out the mess of pink and white scars on his skin and wished he could somehow erase the evidence of his failures.

“That’s not nothing,” Aang replies, and even though Zuko still isn’t facing him, he can only imagine the wide-eyed, sympathetic gaze he must be fixing on him.

He feels sick.

“To be fair,” Sokka says, “we _did_ knock him into a lot of buildings.”

Zuko sags with relief.

(He still remembers the first time Sokka saw the remnants of carnage on his body, how the intimacy gave way to anger and a vow to kill Ozai then and there.)

“But some of those are burns! And they kind of look like hand—“

“Aang, I don’t think he wants to talk about it,” Katara says gently.

She had also seen them, of course, when she healed the lightning threatening to fry his heart. Unlike Sokka, she hadn’t asked—but the look in her eyes said she understood far more than she was letting on.

Zuko finally manages to grab another shirt and his cloak before Aang manages to further untangle the bundle of trauma coiled tight behind his sternum. He dresses quickly, donning the cloak and slipping the hood over his head. The sleeves reach his elbows, hiding the shadows of his father's perpetual disappointment.

“We should get going soon,” he says as he walks back to the campfire.

Katara hands him a bowl of food, and he nods his thanks.

“No fair, I’m the plans guy!” Sokka protests. “And _I_ say we should leave soon.”

“Okay, ‘plan guy’,” Katara says sarcastically. “How are we getting to Hira’a without riding Appa?”

Sokka scratches his head. “Uh…”

“Why can’t we take Appa?” Aang asks.

“Because if the people knew the Avatar and the Fire Lord are here, things are going to get messy.”

Aang full-on pouts at this. “But I _hate_ walking,” he whines.

“Then stay here with the bison,” Zuko says, using all of his energy not to snap at Aang.

“But I want to meet Kiyi!”

“Yeah, sure,” Sokka says, finishing his food and handing the bowl back to Katara. “I’m sure her parents will _love_ having even more strangers in their house.”

“But I’m the Avatar!”

“Well, the _Avatar_ needs to take a little break,” Sokka says, reaching into his knapsack and producing a wide-brimmed straw hat. It reminds Zuko of his time as a refugee ( _and Jin and Jet and the crystal catacombs that haunt his nightmares)._

Aang frowns, but eventually gives in and puts it onto his head, It looks a bit goofy, but it does a good job covering his distinctive tattoos. Sokka’s disguise, on the other hand, looks absolutely ridiculous for no reason at all.

“It’s a great disguise!” Sokka argues as he adjusts his fake bison-hair beard.

“You don’t even _need_ a disguise,” Zuko points out.

“I take offense to that! I’m a very important member of this team, thank you very much!”

His indignation is pitifully unconvincing, especially as he starts to frantically scratch at the beard. By the time he’s done, the majority of Appa’s fur is scattered on the ground.

Katara rolls her eyes as she collects the rest of the dishes, stowing them in her pack on Appa’s saddle.

“We should get going,” she says once she returns.

“Yeah,” Zuko says, “I guess we should.”

Sokka pulls out the map of the city from Spirits-know-where, unfurling it and glancing at the sun to orient himself.

“Okay,” he says. “Hira’a should be a few miles that way.”

He points towards what could have once been a path, now overgrown and practically imperceptible amongst the trees.

“A few _miles_?” Aang all but shouts. “Are you _sure_ we can’t take Appa?”

The bison looks up at his name.

“He’ll be fine,” Sokka says. “Besides, he’s got Momo to keep him company.”

Momo flits off of where he rested on Appa’s head and flops down onto the ground, laying on his back in a solid impression of a dead lemur.

“I guess,” Aang says.

He frowns for another moment before brightening. “Race you guys to Hira’a!”

Zuko tilts his head to the sky and begs Agni to give him strength as Aang bends an air scooter and takes off towards the trees.

“No fair!” Katara yells, uncorking the waterskin at her hip and forming a moving sheet of ice to propel herself forward.

Zuko and Sokka share a glance. 

“I am _not_ running,” Zuko says, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Sure, sure,” Sokka replies.

He holds his hand out to Zuko. “Leisurely stroll?”

“Yeah,” Zuko says as he slots his fingers between Sokka’s.

He realizes what’s about to happen a few seconds before Sokka yanks him forwards, nearly wrenching his shoulder out of its socket.

“I’m coming for you, Katara!” Sokka shouts, as though his sister isn’t long gone.Zuko groans. (And if he speeds up to drag _Sokka_ along—well, that’s nobody’s business.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up: the gaang goes to hira’a!
> 
> i rly didnt realize i had so much shit in this chapter, but here is where to skip:
> 
> between “He’s still rooting around...” and “We should get going soon”  
> and between “He takes a deep breath” and “He surfaces”


	6. flameo, hotman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko wonders, for the millionth time, why the hell he let Sokka and Aang talk him into this.
> 
> “It’ll be fine!” Sokka says, squeezing his hand. “You have your disguise, I have my boomerang; what could go wrong?
> 
> The answer, which becomes incredibly clear just moments later, is a lot.
> 
> or: the gaang hits the town

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for brief allusion to abuse
> 
> (but mostly a fluffy chapter!)

The walk to Hira’a is far too short for Zuko’s liking.

Even though they’d stopped running after a while, every step still felt like one foot closer to his doom. He wonders, for the millionth time, why the hell he let Sokka and Aang talk him into this.

“It’ll be fine!” Sokka says, squeezing his hand. “You have your disguise, I have my boomerang; what could go wrong?

The answer, which becomes incredibly clear just moments later, is _a lot._

The streets of Hira’a, which Zuko had hoped would be mostly empty, are mobbed with people.

“I thought Hira’a was supposed to a small town,” Aang says, frowning. “Why is it so crowded?”

Sokka shrugs, stretching up to stand on his tip-toes for a better vantage point. “It looks like they’re performing some sort of play.”

Aang’s face lights up, and Katara is quick to shut him down. “Do you remember what happened the _last time_ we saw a play?”

“Hey!” Sokka protests. “The guy who played me wasn’t half bad!”

Katara levels him with a glare that immediately launches the siblings into a heated debate about the objectively cringeworthy experience that was _The Boy in the Iceberg._

Zuko, despite his own burning hatred for the Ember Island Players’ abomination of a show (seriously, how did they even _manage_ to put the scar on the wrong side?), finds himself far too enraptured by the performance in front of them to contribute.

Two actors circle each other on the otherwise empty stage, offset by a simple background of mountaintops and a yellow sky. On one side, an imposing figure in Fire Nation regalia stands tall, his face covered by an intricate red mask carved in the shape of a dragon. Across from him, his counterpart, clad in a traditional Water Tribe tunic, matches every step.

“I recognize that scene,” Zuko says. “It’s the final battle in _Love Amongst the Dragons_.”

He stares at the familiar blue mask of the Water Spirit as the actress shifts into a bending position, the Dragon Emperor following suit.

“Wretched Water Spirit!” the Dragon Emperor shouts. “Now that I’ve escaped your curse and regained my true nature, you shall pay for your trickery!”

“Have you learned nothing from your time amongst the mortals? By threatening me, you invite your own doom!” the Water Spirit replies, thrusting her hand forward as an array of turquoise ribbons erupts from her wrist.

The Dragon Emperor responds in kind with a shower of oranges and reds. Unlike the Water Spirit’s open palms, his fists are clenched tight.

The actors duck and weave around one another in perfect harmony, a dazzling display of push and pull, give and take. ( _Tui and La_.)

It’s beautiful, utterly breathtaking—but Zuko knows what comes next.

(He thinks of a chipped mask, an identity forever discarded; of letting go of the sole remnant of who he once was.)

With a practiced ease, the Dragon Emperor leaps over the Water Spirits’ attack, bringing with him the delicate balance. The dance is over, now, leaving only the angry power of the Dragon Emperor as he sends a blast of fiery ribbons directly into the Water Spirit’s face.

“No!” the Water Spirit cries, falling to her knees. “Curse you, foul dragon!”

Zuko feels someone poking his side—likely Aang, giving how much the motion was blowing his cloak around—and tries to shush him.

“This is the best part,” he whispers. “Be quiet.”

The incessant tapping stops, and Zuko returns his attention to the stage. A large, golden arch has been placed in the center of it, under which the Dragon Emperor and Water Spirit embrace.

“Though I was trapped in the body of a mortal, you willingly gave me your heart!” says the Dragon Emperor, tightening his arms around the Water Spirit’s waist. “I cannot help but give you mine in return.”

The Water Spirit, now dressed in a sheer, azure gown, tilts her head up and caresses the side of the Dragon Emperor’s mask. “Only with your glory hidden in false form could you finally recognize my devotion.”

The crowd cheers as the two lean in for a kiss, their masks—matching, yet so incredibly different—bumping against each other. As the applause grows louder, the two actors reveal their bare faces, grinning at one another as they bow.

“Wow,” Katara says, swiping away a few stray tears with her finger. “That was beautiful.”

Zuko nods. “My mother used to take us to watch the Ember Island Players perform it every summer.”

“I didn’t know you liked plays,” Katara says, smiling.

“Azula and I used to reenact that scene on the beach as kids.” He isn’t sure what possesses him to say it, but for once, his sister’s name doesn’t bring a bitter taste to his mouth. “She always made me play the dark Water Spirit, though.”

Aang perks up at this. “Is that where you got the Blue Spi—“

“Shh,” Zuko hisses, glancing around wildly and praying that nobody was paying attention to the latest installment of Aang’s blabbermouth.

But Sokka...Sokka is _grinning_. “What?” he chides. “Did you think we _didn't_ know about your super secret ninja alter ego?”

Zuko opens his mouth, then closes it, before opening it again. “I—it was supposed to be secret!”

“Well, next time you want to keep something under wraps, maybe consider _not_ using the exact same weapons.”

Zuko blushes and looks away.

“Everybody’s leaving,” Aang announces. (It’s completely unnecessary, but maybe this is his attempt at some sort of apology. Joke’s on him: Zuko can hold a grudge.) “What do we do now?”

Zuko shrugs. “Look for Noriko?”

 _“Or,_ ” Sokka cuts in, grinning, “We could go find some fire flakes. All that acting crap made me hungry.”

“...Fine.”

* * *

Their quest for fire flakes leads them to a bustling marketplace. People pick over carts of fruits and pastries and knicknacks, chattering all the while.

It takes them an embarrassingly long time to find the right stall, and Zuko palms the coins in his pocket.

“You’re going to have to order,” Zuko says, nudging Sokka forward.

His boyfriend looks confused before he catches the stare of the vendor, who is folded over nearly in half in an attempt to peer under Zuko’s hood.

“Yeah, okay.” He holds out his hand, in which Zuko places some money. “I’ll be back soon, don’t miss me too much.”

Zuko snorts. “As if.”

He blushes when he notices Aang and Katara’s matching smirks of amusement. “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” Katara says with a tone that implies it is most definitely not _nothing_.

Agni, he doesn’t think he’ll _ever_ understand girls.

Sokka returns before Katara can tease him further, arms full of packets of fresh fire flakes.

“Those smell so good!” Aang says, making grabby hands. (If Zuko had any less self-respect, he would be too.)

Sokka grins as he tosses the largest of the bags to Aang. “Mild for my sister and the Avatar—I mean, _Avatar enthusiast_!”

Zuko rolls his eyes.

“Extra spicy for His Flamey-ness.” The contents of the bag tossed his way are still warm, and Zuko rips into it eagerly. “And medium hot for me.”

Zuko already knows this isn’t going to end well.

“Sokka, why do you do this _every time_?” Katara asks. “Is it a masculinity thing?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sokka replies, his words garbled around the fire flakes in his mouth.

“I give him fifteen seconds,” Zuko says.

Katara grins at him. “I give him ten.”

“You guys are so mean,” Sokka whines.

“And you’re disgusting,” Katara retorts. “Chew with your mouth closed.”

Katara, as she is with most things, is right: Sokka only lasts ten seconds before he spits his half-chewed fire flakes onto the ground.

“Water,” Sokka rasps, eyes tearing up. “Need water.”

Katara rolls her eyes as she bends some of her water into his mouth with a bit more force than necessary, letting some of it splash out onto his reddened cheeks.

Once he’s done gulping and spluttering, Sokka is quick to attest that the vendor must have mixed up their bags, and the one he ate from was actually Zuko’s.

He makes to grab the other snack, but Zuko holds it out of his reach. “No way.”

Sokka’s protests immediately die down when Zuko pops a few flakes into his mouth and exhales a tendril of smoke. “See? _Mine_.”

“Show off,” Sokka mutters.

Zuko just holds his hand out and raises his brow.

“ _Fine_ ,” Sokka groans, passing his bag of fire flakes to Zuko none too gently. “Fucking firebenders and their fucking snacks.”

“What was that?” Zuko asks innocently, grinning as he munches on another handful of flakes.

“It sounded to me like _someone_ is upset he can’t handle a little spicy food,” Katara teases. 

“I have delicate taste buds!” Sokka says, sticking his tongue out for emphasis. “And these are hotter than normal!”

Zuko snorts. “They really aren’t.”

“Not helping!” Sokka yelps.

Aang and Katara are barely holding back snickers at this point; Zuko would be too, if he hadn’t just dumped the rest of the contents of his bag into his mouth.

“Can we just forget about the stupid fire flakes for now?”

“I mean, you _are_ the one who brought them up to begin with,” Zuko says.

“Well, _clearly_ I made a mistake,” Sokka replies. “So let’s get moving.”

Zuko just shrugs and begins to tear into Sokka’s discarded fire flakes. “Then by all means, lead the way.”

* * *

They wander deeper into the market at a tedious pace; Sokka insists on inspecting every item that catches his eye (which is most of them), and Aang has an infuriating habit of wandering off every five seconds.

“We should try to talk to someone, see if they know anything,” Zuko suggests.

Sokka nods. “Sure!”

He stands there for a moment before frowning at Zuko. “I thought you were going to talk to someone.”

Zuko raises his brow. “I’m undercover, remember? And Katara’s out wrangling Aang, so…”

He looks at Sokka pointedly, who just rolls his eyes. “ _Fine._ Step aside.”

Zuko tries not to let the relief show on his face as Sokka strolls up to a nearby shopkeeper with an air of confidence Zuko could never hope to achieve, even in his wildest dreams. He spots the exact moment the merchant realizes that Sokka is not, in fact, a potential customer: the man’s mustache droops so low that it appears mere seconds from sliding off his face entirely. Sokka seems unfazed, and returns to the group (now complete after Katara managed to drag Aang back) with a smile.

“Good news, everyone: the merchant said Noriko’s husband is actually at the market.”

“Really?” Katara asks, clasping her hands together in excitement.

“Yeah,” Sokka replies. “He was also weirdly intense about the guy buying his roasted lychee nuts.”

“Probably because he wanted _you_ to buy them instead of interrogating him,” Zuko mutters.

“Hey, I heard that!” Sokka squeaks. “Anyways, he’s supposedly getting platypus-bear eggs right now, so we have to hurry if we want to catch him.”

They nod, then follow Sokka towards another section of carts as fast as they can without running. Zuko fidgets with his hood the entire time; if it blows off or exposes too much of his face, he’s fucked.

Luckily, the people of Hira’a don’t pay him much mind, especially as he ducks his head whenever he senses a gaze on him. _How honorable._

They do, in fact, find a man—whom Zuko hopes is _the_ man—inspecting the cartons of eggs displayed in front of him. Well, it’s less like they _find_ a man, and more like Aang accidentally bowls him over in his single-minded quest to chase what he swears is a squirrel-toad.

He manages to prevent them both from hitting the ground with a small blast of wind, bringing them gently up to their feet. Some of the eggs are knocked off the table in the scuffle as well, and Aang dives to the ground in an attempt to catch them. He surprisingly doesn’t let them drop.

Well, all except one, which splatters on the man’s shoes.

“Sorry,” Aang says, blushing sheepishly. “Let me help.”

His definition of help, apparently, means trying to airbend the yolk away. All it does is spray onto the poor guy’s pants.

Even with his hood pulled low, Zuko can tell he’s not the only one suffering from crippling secondhand embarrassment. 

“Agni above!” the man shouts. Strangely, he doesn’t sound angry (which he should, given the fact that a child just ruined his trousers with _eggs_ ). “Am I in the presence of the Avatar?”

“That’s me!” Aang says, suddenly looking far more cheery than anyone in his egg-breaking position has any right to be. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone named Noriko, would you?”

 _Wow._ Aang’s tact truly knows no bounds.

“Yes, I do,” the man says, extending a hand. “My name is Noren, and Noriko is my wife.”

 _Noren,_ like the mortal name of one of the lovers in _Love Amongst the Dragons._ He realizes, belatedly, that he’s seen the man before—when he’d taken a bow in front of a throng of cheering fans.

Aang, either oblivious of the man’s identity or simply unfazed by it, shakes Noren’s hand with a degree of enthusiasm that leaves Zuko praying for the tendons in his wrist. Noren, however, laughs at Aang’s eagerness so heartily that the hairs of his thin mustache nearly disappear into the folded skin of what was once the space separating his upper lip and nose.

The sound, much to Zuko’s unease, has drawn the attention of the merchants and clientele of the nearby stalls. Most don’t even bother to hide the way they lean forward to try to catch a glimpse of the Aang, or the shift of their bodies as they angle their ears for any snippet of conversation.

“Forgive me, young Avatar,” Noren says. “But why are you searching for my dear Noriko?”

Whispers float through the air around him. The murmuring rings in his brain almost as badly as his useless left ear.

“My friend received a letter inviting him to visit,” Aang explains, blissfully unaware of his extensive audience.

“I see.” Noren looks over at Sokka and Katara, who stand a few feet behind Aang, and nods to each in turn. “I was not aware my wife had acquaintances from the Water Tribe.”

“Er…” Aang starts awkwardly, scratching at his head under the hat that he’s wearing for the express purpose of _not_ telling people he’s the Avatar. “It’s actually a different friend of mine.”

Noren frowns, beginning to scan for the Avatar’s additional acquaintance, who just so happens to be doing his best to melt into the shadows of the wall behind him. He thought, what with the black cloak and all, he’d be able to avoid detection when Aang inevitably blew his cover, too. 

But Noren doesn’t need the assistance of Aang, or of his big mouth; he narrows in on Zuko in an instant.

Sighing, Zuko drags himself out of the darkness—hiding from adults, in his experience, never ends well.

He makes sure to tug his hood even lower, and ignores the telltale sound of stitches snapping, pulled too taut to survive. When he dares to glance up, Noren is staring at him. His eyes take the familiar path to the left side of his face, and Zuko has to force his expression to remain neutral. 

There’s something oddly hard in Noren’s expression. Not angry, but…guarded. Clearly, the man recognizes him (although, quite frankly, anyone with semi-functional eyes can recognize him).

“Fire Lord Zuko,” Noren says, bowing.

He hears the rustle of fabric and scattering of pebbles as their eavesdroppers lock in on a new target. Their stares burrow into his skin, stirring up a phantom prickle beneath the deadened skin of his scar.

“Noren,” Zuko begins. “I understand if you are busy, but may we take this conversation somewhere more…private?”

Noren considers him for a moment before nodding. “If it is alright with you, may we go towards the schoolhouse? I need to walk my daughter home.”

Zuko is quick to agree. “That’s actually the reason I’m here,” he explains. “I met your daughter at the Boiling Rock.”

“Yes,” Noren says, beginning to head towards a nearby alley; Zuko keeps pace next to him, while the rest of Team Avatar follows close behind. “Kiyi mentioned you. I thank you for your mercy and compassion.”

Zuko hopes his shudder at the word _mercy_ isn’t too noticeable. Is this who his people think he is? Merciless? Uncaring of children? 

( _Like his father?_ )

“Of course,” Zuko settles on saying. “She is very brave.”

Noren smiles proudly. “She really is.”

“I would like to see her—if that’s alright with you, of course.”

If Zuko hadn’t been watching him so closely, he would’ve missed the nearly imperceptible hesitation in Noren’s step before he answers. “It would be an honor, Your Highness.”

“Just Zuko is fine,” he says, heat rising in his cheeks.

Noren nods. “As you wish.”

They spend the remainder of the journey to the schoolhouse in silence, the air too awkward for Zuko to even entertain the thought of breaking it. He can’t help but sigh in relief when they reach their destination, a wooden building no larger than the crew quarters on the _Wani._ A burgundy flag accented with the golden flames of the Fire Nation is raised outside, rippling in the light breeze.

As he watches it, Zuko realizes that this is the first time the sight of his nation’s symbol flying doesn’t fill him with a nauseating, shame-ridden rage.

A bell rings, and not even seconds later a gaggle of children pours through the door. They chatter excitedly, words practically incomprehensible as they talk over on another. The sight of school children happy, _unafraid_ , is still a somewhat novel concept to Zuko. 

(His own lessons were taught with a strict hand, his teachings seared into his skin.)

The crowd begins to thin as the kids disperse, and Zuko finally manages to spot Kiyi skipping through the schoolyard. Her dark hair is pulled into a loose top-knot, smile bright as she spots her father. Her smile is blinding, lighting up her features.

He blinks, and for a moment, all he can see is a not-yet predatory slant in her grin and a sparkle in her golden eyes that will soon evolve into mischief and malice and pride, so much pride.

For a moment, all he can see is Azula.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if the ending got weird, this just got way longer than i realized and i couldnt figure out where to cut it off lol


	7. breaking bread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kiyi nods eagerly, scurrying to the door and flinging it open. “Mommy! Guess who’s here!”
> 
> or: dinner with a side of pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a bit of a doozy, warnings for references to abuse & domestic violence

Zuko has the foresight to sneak back to the alleyway before Kiyi makes it past the schoolyard gates. Sokka trails behind him, frowning as though he’s once again forgotten the whole _keeping a low profile_ thing.

(Maintaining his last vestige of secrecy was, course, precisely why he’d snuck away—not for any Azula-related reasons, none at all.)

It seems he made the right decision: the moment Noren leads the group back to the alley, Kiyi practically trips over herself in her haste to bow to him, her posture eerily similar to her father’s.

“Fire Lord Zuko,” she says, barely holding back her excitement. She pauses, tilting her head as though considering something, then adds, “Oh, sorry. You said just to call you Zuko.”

Zuko nods, signaling for her to rise; he doesn’t think he’ll ever be comfortable with all the bowing his title inspires.

Kiyi straightens her back, adjusting a small satchel as she stands and hurries over to her father.

“Daddy!” she says, linking her arm with his. “I didn’t know you knew Zuko, too!”

Noren offers her a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Your mother invited him to dinner.”

“This is so exciting! Is Mommy still making loco moco?”

When Noren nods, Kiyi begins to skip forward so quickly that she’s practically dragging her father behind her.

“Careful,” he warns. “I don’t want to drop any of these platypus-bear eggs—well, any _more_ of them.”

Sokka snickers as Aang’s face turns red.

Kiyi pouts. “But I _hate_ platypus-bear eggs!”

“You need them to help you get big and strong,” he says.

They begin to approach what Zuko presumes is the residential area of Hira’a. The bustling streets and storefronts are thinning out, replaced by fields of crops and grazing hippo-cows. It’s remote enough that Zuko can remove his hood without fear of being seen.

“Zuko,” Kiyi asks, turning around to face him, “Do _you_ like platypus-bear eggs?”

“Of course,” he lies; platypus-bear eggs are, in fact, incredibly high up on the list of foods Zuko would rather starve than consume.

Kiyi huffs. “ _Fine._ I guess I’ll eat them.”

“Attagirl,” Noren says, unlinking his arm from Kiyi’s to ruffle her hair.

“Stop!” she cries, giggling.

The whole scene, in Zuko’s opinion, is utterly bizarre. It reminds him of the way Hakoda acted around his kids—that is to say, the complete opposite of his own father.

Noren slows to a stop outside a modest home, its paned windows open and letting out a heavenly aroma.

“Mmm,” Aang says dreamily. “Smells like fruit tarts.”

It is only once he speaks that Kiyi seems to realize that Zuko isn’t traveling alone.

“Hi!” she says. “Are you the Avatar?”

Does Kiyi somehow have super-hearing that allowed her to overhear them in the marketplace? He squashes that theory when he sees that _nope,_ Aang just took off his hat.

“Yeah!” he says, grinning. “Check this out.”

Zuko nearly loses the battle of not smacking himself in the face when Aang does his marble trick.

“Wow!” she exclaims. “That’s so cool!”

_At least someone finds it amusing._

“Did you really defeat the Fire Lord?”

Aang and Zuko exchange a glance.

“I did,” he finally says, “With the help of my friends.”

He gestures to each member of Team Avatar in turn. (And yeah, Zuko knows he seriously needs to tell Sokka to come up with a better name for them.)

Kiyi’s gaze lands on Sokka. “I know you. You protected me from that scary man.”

Sokka grimaces; _that scary man_ is, after all, his father. “Er, yeah. It’s good to see you again.”

Kiyi nods, then points to Katara. “Are you guys twins?”

Katara laughs, and Sokka twitches, looking about two seconds away from popping a blood vessel. “No, this is my _little sister_ Katara.”

“I’m fifteen, Sokka—I’m not an infant.”

Kiyi’s eyes dart between the two before she smiles proudly, holding her head high. “I’m eight! I had my birthday a few weeks ago.”

Zuko nearly chokes on his own spit, because that means...that means that Kiyi was _seven_ when they’d found her at Boiling Rock.

He must not do a very good job pretending he isn’t going to be sick, because Noren interrupts their conversation to suggest they head inside. Kiyi nods eagerly, scurrying to the door and flinging it open.

“Mommy! Guess who’s here!”

She’s loud enough that they can hear her even before they follow her through the doorway and into a small kitchen.

There, flicking together a pair of spark rocks, is whom Zuko presumes is Noriko. She wears a simple maroon tunic, her long hair pulled into a ponytail and draped over her shoulder. When she turns away from the stove, her eyes widen.

“My Lord,” she says, setting the spark rocks aside and bowing deeply.

“Uh, you can rise,” Zuko says.

Noriko obliges and offers him a smile that creases her laugh lines. “Of course.”

“I received your letter,” Zuko says. “That’s, uh, why I’m here.”

“It’s an honor. Would you and your companions like to stay for dinner?”

“Dinner would be great!” Aang chirps.

Noriko’s initial surprise at seeing Zuko is nothing compared to her shock when she recognizes Aang. “Avatar Aang,” she says. “I am truly humbled to be in your presence.”

“He isn’t _that_ great,” Sokka mutters.

Noriko frowns in confusion, likely at the sheer number of people Zuko has brought into her kitchen.

“I’m Sokka,” he says, holding out his hand for her to shake. “I’m Zuko’s…”

He pauses, looking to Zuko—Zuko, who’s frozen in ( _shock? embarrassment?)_ unsureness. What does he want Sokka to say? _The truth,_ his mind whispers.

 _Or,_ the anxiety clutching his heart argues, _anything but it._

“...most trustworthy ambassador.”

Zuko isn’t sure if the answer fills him with shame or relief.

Katara shoots her brother a confused glance before she introduces herself as Aang’s waterbending teacher.

“And girlfriend!” Aang adds.

Zuko swallows and looks anywhere but at Sokka.

* * *

They move to the sitting area once Noriko shoos them out of the kitchen. Noren stays to help her cook, and if Zuko thinks too much about that he‘s pretty sure his head may explode.

Kiyi disappears through another doorway as they sit on the various mats laid out on the floor. The room itself is small, yet it’s cozy rather than claustrophobic.

Zuko waves at Kiyi when she returns, and she hurries to his side, arms hidden at her back. “Wanna meet my doll?”

“Of course,” Zuko replies; Sokka, seated next to him, nods excitedly.

With a grin, Kiyi reveals the doll she’s been hiding behind her. Its pink dress is faded, button eyes half unstitched and stuffing squeezed thin in a way that only comes with love.

“This is Kiyi,” she says.

Sokka squints in confusion. “I thought _your_ name was Kiyi.”

“It’s such a good name I used it twice!”

“Genius,” Sokka whispers.

“Well,” Zuko says, considering the doll, “Little Kiyi has a very...interesting haircut.”

He wants to smack himself—why is he so fucking awkward all time?

Kiyi blushes. “I wanted to make her prettier, but it didn’t turn out very good.”

“My sister did stuff like that when she was little.” Agni, his case of foot-in-mouth disease just keeps getting worse.

“Why isn’t she here with you?” Kiyi asks.

It’s an innocent question, especially coming from a child. It still manages to knock the wind out of him.

“She’s...away right now.”

“Why?”

He’s saved from having to come up with an explanation that _doesn’t_ include the words _psychotic break_ by the arrival of dinner. Noriko and Noren each carry a few plates, passing them out before taking a seat at the table by Aang and Katara.

Zuko isn’t exactly sure what he’s eating ( _Is this the loco moco Kiyi mentioned?)_ , but it smells fantastic. It tastes even better.

Noren waves him away when he says as much. “It’s just something my mother used to make.”

“Noren made it for me on our first date,” Noriko adds, taking her husband’s hand.

“That’s so sweet,” Aang says. “How long have you two been married?”

“Almost five years now,” Noriko replies.

“It must be nice,” Katara says, looking (much to Zuko’s internal discomfort) at Aang.

“It is. But you two are a little young to be thinking about marriage, aren’t you?”

Sokka chokes on his food. “Yes,” he says between coughs. “Yes they are.”

Katara and Aang blush, doing a strange dance of glancing at each other and then away repeatedly.

Noriko laughs. “You know what? I take that back. Love leads where love leads, regardless of age. Besides, Noren and I found each other pretty late in life. Young lovers like you are lucky.”

Sokka sputters at the word _lovers,_ then glares at Zuko when he snorts in amusement.

His voice cracks when he tries to steer the conversation away from his sister’s love life a bit too forcefully. “We saw you guys in the play earlier.”

Zuko is confused for all of five seconds before he realizes that he’s seen Noriko before, too—as the Water Spirit.

Noren smiles. “I wasn’t aware our esteemed guests were fellow thespians.”

Zuko hisses to Sokka that the word means _actors_ before he says anything stupid.

“We’re actually just fans,” Katara explains. “But your performance was fantastic.”

“Yeah,” Sokka says. “Zuko here is a _huge_ fan of _The Dragon Lovers._ ”

“It’s _Love Amongst the Dragons_ ,” Zuko corrects before he can stop himself. He looks down at his plate when he notices everyone’s stares. “It’s just, uh, one of my favorites.”  
  
“Mine too,” Noriko says.

Her husband looks at her fondly. “My wife was born to play the lead in this show.”

Noriko playfully nudges him. “Don’t sell yourself short. You make a _great_ Dragon Emperor.”

“Yeah, Daddy, you’re fantasmic!”

“ _Fantastic,_ ” Noren corrects gently.

Kiyi nods and repeats the word. 

And Zuko, once again, cannot comprehend how Noren is just so... _nice._

He thinks he begins to understand once the dishes are cleared away and Noriko offers to open a bottle of rice wine. Well, more accurately, she _insists_ on it, claiming it’s a special occasion.

He follows her towards a cabinet in the hall, spotting the bottle on the top shelf. She bats Zuko away, intent on retrieving it herself, so he resigns himself to hovering nearby in case she falls off the concerningly flimsy-looking wooden stool. It wobbles as she climbs onto it, and Zuko holds his hands out slightly, ready to catch her if necessary.

The stool, surprisingly, doesn’t collapse under her weight. It isn’t too helpful, though, because even with the added height, she has to strain to reach the top shelf. Her arm looks nearly ready to pop out of its socket as she stretches it out as high as it will go, though she finally manages to snag her prize.

As she wraps her fingers around the neck of the bottle, Zuko feels his breath stutter in his chest; there, where the bottom of Noriko’s shirt has ridden up to reveal pale flesh, are a smattering of burns.

They’re small, no larger than coins. For all he knows, they could be birthmarks; five, identical pink birthmarks. They could be _anything,_ really: a cooking mishap, or a careless display of firebending, or a windy campsite.

(The options all sound sickeningly similar to a “training accident.”)

But the size of the scars, the spacing—not to mention their nauseatingly intimate placement—tells a different story.

“I got it,” Noriko says, stepping down and smiling. “Follow me to the sitting room?”

Zuko nods, not trusting himself to speak. Sokka and Noren are in the midst of setting out four glasses (evidently, Sokka has deemed Aang and Katara too young to drink), which Noriko begins to fill with rice wine. She stands by her husband once she’s finished, raising her glass with a smile.

“To Fire Lord Zuko,” she says, “And to a new era of peace.”

The _clink_ of their glasses reverberates in Zuko’s bad ear, and he bites back a wince as he takes a swig. The bitter taste of the wine isn’t exactly pleasant, and his gulps aren’t exactly regal, but Zuko can’t focus on anything aside from the way Noren has his arm wrapped around Noriko’s waist as they sit down.

“So, Noren,” he begins, trying to sound conversational. “Are you a firebender?”

Noren shakes his head. “Why do you ask?”

_Because my fucked-up family has conditioned me to believe burns are never accidents._

“Oh, no reason!” Zuko says, the attention on him becoming increasingly uncomfortable. “Er, well, I’m actually kind of cold, but it’s your house, so…”

If Noren sees through what was clearly a blatant lie, he didn’t show it.

“Go right ahead,” he says instead, gesturing to the quiet fire pit in the center of the room. “You’re our guest, and we want you to be comfortable.”

Zuko bows his head. “Thank you.”

He sends a small spark into the kindling, bathing them in its warm glow.

“So…” Aang draws the word out, fidgeting in the now awkward silence. “There’s actually another reason we’re visiting Hira’a. Do you know anything about a giant wolf spirit?”

Zuko wants to groan—why is Aang always like this?

Noren frowns. “I can’t say that I do.”

“Nonsense, Noren,” Noriko says. “Don’t you remember the legend of Forgetful Valley?”

“Forgetful Valley?” Aang asks, leaning forward in excitement. “What’s that?”

“A forest at the bottom of a canyon, just outside of town,” she explains.

“Oh, yes,” Noren says, words oddly stilted. “I remember now. They say the heartbroken go there to forget their lives.”

Katara frowns. “That’s so sad.”

“So, does that mean the spirit wolf lives in the valley?” Aang asks.

“Perhaps,” Noren replies.

Aang turns to Katara, smiling. “Then we have to go!”

Katara appears more hesitant, but agrees.

“Great,” Sokka mutters. “Can’t wait to get attacked by more moth-wasps.”

Zuko stares down at his glass of wine. Maybe later, he and Sokka can get properly drunk. He could really use it after the day he’s had.

“I do not believe the spirits there to be violent,” Noriko says. “I have only heard tales of their benevolence.”

“Really?” Aang asks.

While he practically radiates with excitement, Noren is studying his wine nearly as carefully as Zuko.

Noriko, either oblivious to her husband’s discomfort or uncaring of it, continues to speak. “I remember hearing about someone from the Hira’a Acting Troupe who went after a long-lost lover—Ikem, I believe his name was—to Forgetful Valley.”

“That sounds so romantic,” Katara says.

“It sounds _stupid,_ ” Sokka grumbles in response.

Noren seems to share his sentiment. “Romantic or _tragic_? Forgetful Valley is a dark, dangerous place. No one who enters ever returns.”

“What about the woman from your acting troupe?” Katara asks. “Did she ever come back?”

“That was before my time here, so I’m not sure what happened to her,” Noriko replies. “I apologize.”

“That’s okay,” Aang says. “I still think we should check it out tomorrow. This sounds like it could be Avatar business.”

“Good luck,” Noriko says, raising her glass to him before taking another sip. “Please do let us know if you find her; apparently, she was quite a legend in the theater community here. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from her.”

She, like Zuko, waits for her husband to compliment her, to laugh and tell her that she already has enough talent on her own.

Noren is silent.

“Oh!” Noriko says suddenly, snapping her fingers. “I just remembered: her name was Ursa.”

The world around Zuko shudders to a halt. He feels like he’s trapped underwater, choking on screams that only come out as bubbles.

So Zuko, coward that he is, does what he does best when confronted with any sort of problem: he runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope yall are ready, more angst coming soon


	8. zuko alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko isn’t sure where he’s going, but since when has he ever had a plan? He’s always had an affinity for running away from his problems (and from himself), charging in blindly and ruining everything in the process.
> 
> or: zuko spirals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for referenced abuse, panic attack, dissociation, unintentional self-harm, & just overall self-deprecation
> 
> this chapter is mainly introspective (and me projecting my mental illnesses), so you won’t miss much if you need to skip. (fr please don’t read if possibly triggering, i put a basic summary of the actual plot points in the end notes)

Zuko doesn’t remember leaving Noriko’s house. He doesn’t remember if he thanked the couple for their hospitality before he rushed out the door, nor does he remember if he said goodbye to Kiyi.

All he knows is the burning in his lungs and the ringing in his ears as he runs without a destination in mind other than _away._

 _This isn’t happening_ , he tells himself. _This isn’t happening._

Maybe he’d misheard Noriko, or maybe she’d been talking about a _different_ Ursa. (Maybe Azula wasn’t the only one cracking at the seams.)

He isn’t sure where he’s going, but since when has he ever had a plan? He’s always had an affinity for running away from his problems (from _himself)_ , charging in blindly and ruining everything in the process.

He’s past the fields of crops and pastures, now, noticing belatedly the sting of branches whipping across his face. A part of him hopes his aimless trajectory leads him to the Forgetful Valley so that he can quiet the buzzing in his brain and forget his neverending list of sins. (Forget like his mother forgot him and Azula and left him to _burn_.)

The scar warping around his face (slitting his eye and taking his sight and leaving him half-deaf to the suffering constantly surrounding him) flares with pain as he pushes onward, and a masochistic part of him latches onto the sensation, because at least that means he’s real.

He sees his mother with him, feeding the turtle-ducks. His mother, wiping away his tears. His mother, risking her life for his. His mother, _purging him from her memory._

Would she care, if she knew what Ozai had done? She certainly hadn’t stepped in before. He wonders if she’d already forgotten him by the time the royal decree ( _celebration_ ) of his banishment reached the lower archipelagos. Did she think it was just, branding him as a traitor? Did she even know it was her son?

Noriko had mentioned that Ursa went to the Forgetful Valley in search of her lover. Had she been with him before her engagement to Ozai? Had they consummated their relationship?

_Was Azula right?_

He thinks about his discussion with Mai. She’d said Azula was delusional—but Mai’s opinion didn’t mean his sister was _wrong._

Was this... _Ikem..._ his father?

The thought makes his head spin.

 _It makes sense_ , he’d told Mai. _It makes sense._

If he was a child bred out of wedlock—especially by a prince’s _bride_ —surely he would bring shame to the royal family. He was damned from the start, a disappointment to his father and all the Fire Lords before him. It must have been a sick joke, acting as though he was of Sozin’s blood; acting as though he could one day mould his sub-par bending into anything remotely regal.

Had Azula always known the truth about her weak, powerless older brother? (Had Uncle?)

He used to think his father’s—no, not his father’s, _Ozai’s_ —response to his cowardice at their Agni Kai was an act of mercy; now, he’s not so sure.

The overwhelming whirlwind of thoughts tearing through Zuko’s head grinds to a halt as his foot catches on an exposed root, jerking away his balance and sending him falling face-first towards the forest floor. Scrapes bloom on his palms as he catches himself on his hands and knees. His arms tremble with the effort of staying upright, and Zuko just...lets go.

The pressure of the ground rushing up to meet his ribcage knocks the wind out of him, and he claws his fingers in the dirt as he struggles to breathe. He can feel the flakes of sediment and mud becoming trapped under his nails, adding another point of pressure to the livewire burning within him.

He’s dimly aware he’s crying, but can’t bring himself to care. Out here, surrounded by nothing but trees and darkness and dishonor, nobody is here to judge him for it. (Maybe Agni would, resting on the other side of the Earth—but when has his god ever cared about him?)

The wind whips through the nearby brambles. Maybe it’s actually an animal, or perhaps a forest spirit; at this point, he isn’t exactly opposed to being eaten by a komodo-lion.

Much to his chagrin, there is not a predator here to put him out of his misery. Instead, crouching before him, eyes wide with concern, is Sokka.

“Zuko?” he whispers.

Zuko can’t breathe. He can’t breathe, all because Noriko said a stupid _name_ , and now Sokka is here to witness him making a fool out of himself.

“Go away.” It hurts to speak, and the words scratch at his dry throat.

“Look, about what happened back there…”

“Go away!” Zuko rasps again, jerking his hood over his head to shield his face from Sokka’s eyes.

“This ‘Ursa’ person she was talking about,” he continues, as though he can’t see how the words are tearing Zuko to shreds. “Do you think she meant your mom?”

A tear slips down his cheek. He feels so young, so lost, and he wants his mother but she _doesn’t want him_.

The fear and loneliness and _shame_ clenching in his heart threatens to consume him; he forces it back, and suddenly, all he can feel is _rage._

“What do _you_ know of my mother?” he snaps. “You don’t know _anything_!”

His anger pushes him to his feet, fists clenched tightly at his side.

“I know she loved you.” Sokka’s voice is somehow still level, and Zuko _hates it_. “Iroh told me about the turtle-ducks, and the plays, and—“

“Shut _up_!” Zuko shouts, his hands igniting. “Leave me the fuck alone!”

He swipes his hands in an arc in front of him, creating a wall of flame separating him from Sokka. (The last time he’d done this, he’d been kneeling over Uncle’s body; now, it’s over the corpse of everything he’s ever known.)

Sokka jumps back, cursing. “Don’t do this!”

“Do what?” Zuko snarls, breath ragged.

“Act like you did before we knew each other!”

 _Before we knew each other._ Did that even make sense if, up until now, Zuko hadn’t even known _himself_?

The flames burn higher, blindingly bright. He can’t see anything beyond the red tinging the edges of his tear-clouded vision.

“ _Leave!”_ he yells. His voice is more powerful this time, rising and cracking and _surging_ like the fire surrounding him, growing taller and taller until he feels completely consumed by it.

The wind howls as it sprays a torrent of sparks onto Zuko’s skin. Burned by his own flame—how original.

It’s fitting, really, that he can’t control his fire, just as he can never seem to keep himself ( _his honor, his people, his own family)_ in check. It spreads through the trees, taking and destroying and ruining. Zuko knows these sensations far too well: flames crawling up his back and scorching into his shoulders and melting across his face. It’s almost vindicating.

Animals and Spirits scream as the forest burns. Zuko doesn’t make a sound.

* * *

He comes back to himself sometime later. He isn’t sure how much time has passed, and a part of him prefers this ignorance to the crushing guilt of becoming so untethered.

The sky is dark, and the moon above is barely a sliver. He can’t see the stars.

He can, however, see scorch marks razing the earth around him, blackening the deadened grass. Some trees in his periphery are still alight with sparks, slowly burning away like the nothingness in his chest.

When he inhales, he tastes smoke ( _tastes death)_ and he longs to return to that state of nothingness. Instead, he reaches out with his chi to the distant flames and pulls the life from them as he exhales. Soon, the flickering light is gone.

Zuko’s legs tremble as he raises himself up to stand. He presses his palm onto the tree at his back for support, releasing it only when he’s (mostly) sure he won’t fall again. His hand comes away covered in ash.

He calls a fire to it and watches the charred bark flake away until the specks of black soot staining his skin is all that remains.

The forest is quiet. It makes Zuko’s thoughts far too loud.

He feels like a child—emotional and angry and _undisciplined_ —who threw a temper tantrum at the slightest discomfort.

 _Grow the fuck up,_ he orders his traitorous, useless brain. His mind replies with his mother’s name and Sokka’s look of betrayal as he’d lost control.

As he’d _thrown fire at him._

“Fuck,” Zuko mutters. “Fuck!”

The grass beneath his feet is dead and dry ( _he did that, it’s his fault)_ and he sees Sokka standing there, pleading with him, _burning._ He needs to find him; even if Sokka never wants to see him again, he just has to know he’s okay.

If he hurt him…

 _Nope,_ he tells himself. _Not thinking about that._

(Because if he does, he might incinerate himself on the spot.)

There are indents in the grass, he notices; places where the already wilted blades droop even further, as though crushed.

Footprints.

Zuko’s body is so unbelievably tired, but he forces himself forward until he’s running again, calling Sokka’s name and numbly following the tracks of what he hopes are his boyfriend’s feet. (Soon to be ex-boyfriend, probably; if Sokka doesn’t have the instinctual self-preservation to break it off, Zuko may have to do it himself.)

(The thought knocks the breath out of his heaving lungs.)

The trail is spastic, seemingly without any sort of pattern. Didn’t Sokka, survival and navigation expert, know his way back to camp?

He realizes, with a sinking feeling, that maybe he isn’t following Sokka at all.

He keeps running, though—because if he stops, he thinks he might shatter.

Time passes—at least, he thinks it does. He feels like he’s trapped in a nightmare, sprinting through molasses and sinking, _always sinking_. It’s a sensation he knows well from his days of hunting down a fairy tale, always one step behind what he foolishly believed to be his ticket home. 

The forest begins to thicken, the trees growing denser and towering over him. His arms scape against rough bark as he squeezes through the gaps in the brush, chasing a trail that he’s likely lost. He doesn’t care anymore. (Maybe it hadn’t been real to begin with.)

Soon, the branches are too close for him to worm his way through. The claustrophobia weighs heavily on him. He acts on instinct, slashing out a whirl of flames. It devours the trees in his way, and he holds his breath as he runs through the smoldering wreckage.

He continues to burn his way through the forest, only inhaling through his mouth when he reaches the brink of passing out.

 _Keep going,_ he orders his body. _If you stop, it’s all over._

In the end, it is not his aching muscles that force him to collapse, but rather a rope wrapping around his leg and _pulling._

He falls to the ground with a cry, flipping over to try to free himself as it yanks him through the dirt. The binding doesn’t budge as he tugs at it, and if anything, seems to tighten. It digs into his skin, dragging him towards Spirits-know-where and shooting pain up his leg.

He doesn’t even think about the scar it will inevitably leave ( _Agni knows he has enough already_ ) as he burns the rope away. It retracts, leaving a smattering of flames to rain on his skin. Something shrieks, and for once, Zuko knows it isn’t him.

When the rope _(serpent? vine?) latches_ onto him again, it _crawls_. It twists past his thighs, encircling his torso and spreading across his arms. He tries to ignite his hands once more, but whatever the hell is on him—which Zuko, much to his mounting terror, realizes may be _alive_ —winds so tightly around his fists that he fears it will crush his fingers. It doesn’t budge when he tries to summon flames, layering around itself and trapping the heat inside.

He barely notices the earth shifting beneath him as he’s pulled across the ground, moss-covered stones digging into what little of his skin is still exposed.

He tries to scream. He doesn’t know who he expects to hear him. (Sokka, whom he may have hurt? Spirits, who have never _once_ given a shit about him?)

The rope ( _the creature, the Spirit, the curse thrust upon him_ ) covers his mouth before he can make a sound.

(He swears he can feel it creeping down his throat and rearranging his insides.)

He’s falling, now. At least, he thinks he is. His vision is completely obscured, and he can’t hear anything other than the pounding of his heart. Is he dying? Is this Agni, deeming his body unworthy of a funeral pyre to guide him into his next life?

He’s falling, and then he isn’t. His head hits a rock.

He knows no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i am aware i start and/or end each chapter with zuko either waking up or passing out, no i cannot be stopped
> 
> basic summary: zuko runs away and tries to grapple with the idea that ozai isn’t his dad. he fights with sokka, who runs off. he gets lost when he later tries to find sokka, and is dragged away by a strange “living” rope


	9. old ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pair of familiar lips are soft on his cheek as they rouse him from sleep.
> 
> “Mom?” The word, strangely, slips easily off his tongue, blinking blearily.
> 
> or: zuko and spirits do not mix well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for referenced abuse

A pair of familiar lips are soft on his cheek as they rouse him from sleep.

“Mom?” The word, strangely, slips easily off his tongue as he blinks blearily.

He tries to sit up, but his hands struggle for purchase on the silk beneath him. His mother, framed in the muted glow of the moon streaming through the slatted panes of the door, turns to look at him. She offers him a sad smile, brushing her long hair back over the shoulders of her burgundy cloak. Her crown glints where it’s tied to the bun adorning the top of her head.

“Zuko,” she says quietly. “My son.”

He slides off the edge of the bed, stumbling towards her on legs that feel far too short.

“Where are you going?” His voice is similarly tiny, meek and underdeveloped.

His mother doesn’t answer, instead stepping closer. She reaches her arms out towards him, and he flinches back.

His body doesn’t.

Suddenly, he is both within and outside of himself, flickering between congruent states of being. He is a spectre, hovering over the shoulder of his 10-year-old self in a bedroom that has long been collecting dust. He snaps back into his body seconds later, staring at his mother with a clarity of vision the man masquerading as his father had not yet stolen from him.

“Please, my love,” she says, placing her hands on his shoulders, “Listen to me. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done to protect you.”

He wants so badly to believe her, but a strange nagging at the back of his brain says otherwise. It ebbs when his mother pulls her into his arm, cradling his face against her chest. She smells like jasmine and sorrow.

“Remember this, Zuko,” she says, pulling back to look at him. “No matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are.”

She’s slipping away, now, and Zuko can feel her warmth receding. He calls out to her, but she’s fading, disintegrated into the shadows creeping up towards the ceiling.

He tries to run after her, but the world around him fractures, sending him stumbling onto the ground. Where he should feel regal marble beneath his knobby knees, there is only dirt.

This is not his room.

( _Why would he be in a room he hasn’t stepped foot in since his banishment?)_

His head is pounding, and he sways when he tries to stand. He can vaguely make out the shapes of a forest around him, a blur of dark stoicism interrupted only by a small flicker of light.

“Hello?” he rasps, trying to follow the light with his unresponsive body. “Is anyone there?”

His voice sounds warped, scrambled and _wrong_ like the vertigo snaking down his esophagus. The trees stretch taller, growing and hardening into pillars of stone around him as he stumbles towards where he last saw movement.

Azula darts out from behind one of the columns, the palace walls materializing around her. “See, Zuzu? I _told_ you I wasn’t lying.”

She spins a dagger— _Zuko’s_ dagger—between her tiny fingers, raising a brow towards him as if in challenge. The look is still softer than her usual glower.

She’s so small. ( _Why is she so small?)_

The decision to race after her is not one he consciously makes, only registering it when his feet are already moving. “Where’s Mom?”

“No one knows,” Azula replies, eyes glinting as she sheathes the dagger. “Oh, and last night, Grandpa passed away.”

Her gaze is cold, and echoes of her sing-song voice proclaiming that Father was going to kill him the day before (no, _seven years ago_ ) bounce around his skull.

“That’s not funny, Azula!” He tries to make his voice hard like hers; judging by the smirk on her face, he fails miserably. “You’re sick. And I want my knife back, now!”

He lunges forward, but she dangles the dagger just out of reach. His hands open and close helplessly as he tries to grab his blade.

“Who’s going to make me?” Azula taunts. _“Mom?”_

Her sneer looks out of place, an expression too cruel for her baby fat to contort itself into. It boils his blood, leaving it sizzling with hatred and vitriol that quickly gives way to a bizarre sense of emptiness.

Zuko frowns. This is the part where he snatches his dagger and goes running back to Father ( _like he always does)._

His body doesn’t move. His sister laughs.

It feels like drowning—and maybe he actually is, because there’s water crawling up his throat and dripping down his chin as he leans forward to retch it onto the ground.

“Hey, watch what you’re doing!”

The marble floor is gone, replaced by barren earth. In front of him is...a meerkat-prairie dog?

It narrows its eyes at his befuddled expression.

“You people are all the same. No respect for anyone around them.”

Zuko blinks. He’s fairly certain he hasn’t taken any drugs, but what else could explain the creature halfway out of the ground _speaking to him?_

The dirt to the left of the animal shifts as another meerkat-prairie dog emerges. “Oh, great,” it says. “Another human who thinks they own the Spirit World.”

“Spirit World?” Zuko asks, dumbstruck.

The first meerkat-prairie dog turns to the second. “This guy thinks we’re a bunch of chumps, huh?”

It then looks back to Zuko, eyes unsettlingly sharp. “Go destroy someone else’s home. You’re not welcome here.”

When another meerkat-prairie dog pops up to ask what all the fuss is about, Zuko stumbles back towards the forest he can see in the distance. Agni, he just wants this nightmare to be over.

He makes it to the edge of the trees before his legs give out, trembling like a newborn ostrich-horse.

“Pathetic.”

Ozai’s voice echoes from where he sits on a throne in front of him. “You think you’re brave enough to face me, but you’ll only do it during the eclipse.”

The lack of his inner flame, which Zuko now realizes he hasn’t felt since waking up wherever the hell he is right now, seems to grow stronger.

_The eclipse._

He blinks and he’s in the royal bunker; he’s taller, more self-assured. Yet even now, even without his bending, Ozai’s words still burn.

“If you have any real courage, you’ll stick around until the sun comes out.”

_The sun. Fire. Pain erupting across his body._

He should leave. He has a responsibility.

“Don’t you want to know what happened to your mother?”

Zuko stops. Why must he always feel so paralyzed?

“What happened that night?”

His voice is his own, once again, though he still feels far too much like a child.

“My father, Fire Lord Azulon, had commanded me to do the unthinkable to you, my own son, and I was going to do it.”

“You’re wrong!” Zuko tries to shout, but his mouth refuses to cooperate.

“Your mother found out and swore she would protect you at any cost.”

Zuko trembles where he stands, shaking in a body he does not own.

“Your mother did vicious, treasonous things that night. She knew the consequences and accepted them. For her treason, she was banished.”

“So she’s alive?”

“Perhaps,” Ozai says. “Perhaps. Now I realize that banishment is far too merciful a penalty for treason.”

He pauses a moment, glaring at Zuko with a disappointment that cuts straight to the bone.

“Your penalty will be far steeper.”

He tastes the electricity before his father even conjures it, the static creeping through the air and electrifying his skin. He watches as the lightning coils before streaking towards him, but he is not afraid. He holds out his arms to redirect the bolt, just as Uncle taught him.

With a sickening sense of deja vu, Zuko freezes. The lightning strikes his chest, ripping through him over and over and over.

He’s knocked out of his body, watching as though through a screen as he twitches and jerks. When the lightning brings him to the ground, he is simultaneously still upright. He is frying from the inside out, yet he feels nothing, not even the breath in his lungs.

Why isn’t he choking? Why can’t he hear the thrum of his ever-racing heart?

Ozai laughs, spitting on the body writhing at his feet. “Worthless traitor.”

Zuko tries to swear his loyalty, but chokes.

“You are no son of mine.”

Something rips him away from his corporeal form, dragging him through a strange kaleidoscope of landscapes that he can’t quite recognize. By the time he’s deposited in the palace’s courtyard, shaky and sweating, the nausea is overwhelming.

He gags, and when he catches sight of Azula standing across from him in the Fire Lord’s crown _(this is wrong, something’s wrong)_ cultivating a crackling ball of energy between her slender fingers, he is far too tired to even think of redirecting it.

His body is sinking into the floor, slipping beneath the waves of blue flames erupting overhead.

“I have bested you again, brother!” she calls. “Go run back to your _real_ father!”

Her voice fades away along with the world around him. He wonders if this is death, and if he’s been damned to an eternity of his sister’s abuse. Her words ring in his head, pounding into his temples like battering rams.

He’s cracking at the seams, Azula’s laughter raining fragments of memories down upon him like shards of glass.

He’s out of the woods, now, but only in the literal sense. The clearing around him is dark, and a phantom breeze ripples through the grass at his feet. His hair, once again well past his shoulders, doesn’t move as the wind somehow passes _through_ him.

The meerkat-prairie dog’s words echo in his head: _“Another human who thinks they own the Spirit World.”_

Though he’s still not fully convinced this _isn’t_ some drug-induced hallucination, it’s the only explanation he has to go off of.

He hears a rustling in the brush nearby and, not wanting to get reamed by another meerkat-prairie dog (or, Agni forbid, a _moth-wasp_ ), he hurries away from the forest’s edge.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” he mutters to himself.

His only knowledge of the Spirit World comes from Uncle’s ramblings that he only half paid attention to and Aang’s rushed stories that somehow always manage to leave out any and all relevant information.

He’s seen the Spirits up close before, though—how could he ever forget the mesmerizing dance of Tui and La before Zhao came and ruined everything?

Aang had been in the Spirit World then, he realizes. ( _When I kidnapped him,_ he doesn’t add.) What had Sokka and Katara been going on about when they’d tracked him down (and for some reason didn’t leave his unconscious ass to freeze to death)?

_“If Aang’s spirit can’t find his body, he can’t return to it.”_

So, hypothetically, Zuko just has to find his body. (And damn if that doesn’t sound incredibly morbid.) There’s a snag in the plan, though: he doesn’t have the slightest idea of where he is.

_Great. Just great._

Maybe, if he continues to wander, he’ll be able to find himself. He grimaces; since when has his internal monologue sounded like one of Uncle’s proverbs?

Uncle would probably also take this opportunity to tell him to follow the light he sees flickering in the distance. Though he still remembers what happened the _last time_ he followed a strange spirit-y glow, it’s not like he has any better ideas.

The light, it turns out, is a campfire. He instinctively reaches out towards the warmth of the flames, but his element does not respond.

 _Right,_ he remembers. _No bending in the Spirit World._

Now, as he creeps closer, he can see the outlines of three figures silhouetted by the flames. They appear to be arguing.

“I swear, it’s the truth!”

Is that...Sokka? Is he trapped here, too?

The answer, as he nears the fire, is evidently _no_ , because he doesn’t react when Zuko approaches. By all rights, Sokka should be furious with him; instead, he’s bickering with Katara.

“It was an accident, okay? I pushed him to talk, and I shouldn’t have.”

Katara folds her arms over her chest.

“Will you please just help me now?” Sokka asks.

Katara sighs. “Of course I’ll help. Give me your arm.”

For a second, Zuko is almost convinced she’s talking to him. Then a hand reaches out _through his chest._

“What the fuck?” he yelps.

Sokka, whom he hadn’t heard sneak up behind him and had just phased through his sternum like it was nothing, doesn’t acknowledge him.

 _Huh,_ he thinks. _I guess I really am in the Spirit World._

He steps back so that he can see both Sokka and Katara, the former of which is hesitantly holding his bicep out for Katara to inspect.

She frowns as she takes his wrist and twists it side to side. “I can heal it, but we have to peel your shirt away first.”

Sokka winces. “Do we have to?”

Katara’s lack of response is answer enough.

“Fine,” Sokka says. “Just...make it fast.”

Zuko leans forward in an attempt to get a better view of whatever the hell is wrong with Sokka’s arm.

“On the count of three,” Katara says. “One, two—“

There’s a ripping sound, and Sokka _screams_.

He quickly clamps a hand over his mouth as Katara apologizes, hurriedly bending a stream of water to encircle his bicep.

Zuko only manages to catch a glimpse of Sokka’s arm before the water begins to glow, but it makes no difference: the image of his skin, red and blistered and _burned,_ is seared into his retinas.

He’s suddenly glad no one can see him, because he’s on the verge of clawing his eyes out.

He did that to Sokka. _He did that he did that he did that._

“I just don’t get it.” That’s Aang, now, voice tinged with childish confusion. “He’s on our side.”

He turns to Sokka, whose look of pain has all but faded under Katara’s ministrations. “You’re _together._ You aren’t supposed to hurt the people you love.”

“Aang, I told you,” Sokka says, “It was an accident. It was windy, and there were trees everywhere, and—“

“He hurt you!” Aang’s voice is no longer just his own. “You trusted him, and he _hurt you!”_

Sokka’s voice rings in Zuko’s head, the ghost of his fingertips softly tracing across his back. 

_“He’s your father! He’s a sick fucking bastard and deserves to rot for how he hurt you.”_

_“It was cruel and it was wrong. I know that now.”_

Aang’s tattoos begin to flicker as his face contorts between confusion and rage. Katara hurries around the fire to him.

“Sweetie,” she says, placing her hand on his shoulder. “You need to calm down.”

Aang scrunches his eyes shut, clenching his fists.

“It’s okay, buddy,” Sokka says, jogging over to Aang’s other side. “I’m all better now, see? No need to go all Avatar-y.”

He waves his arm in front of Aang, pointing to the smooth, unblemished skin with his other hand. The sight of it calms Zuko’s racing heart, but not by much.

_(He knows what it’s like to burn. He knows that scars linger far deeper than the surface.)_

Aang doesn’t move for a moment, just exhales with enough force to blow Sokka and Katara back a few feet.

When he opens his eyes, they’re a blinding white...and staring straight through the fire at Zuko.

 _“YOU!”_ he shouts, robes billowing in a sudden torrent of wind.

Zuko flinches back, unable to tear his gaze away from the Avatar. He towers over Zuko, tattoos disappearing underneath the eruption of ethereal gray hair. The strands not restrained by his top-knot or beard swirl to create a twisted halo around his thin, hardened features.

“Roku,” Zuko breathes.

The flames surge between them, and Zuko trips backwards in his haste to avoid the fire.

“You _dare_ show your face here?” Roku snarls as he approaches.

“Aang?” Katara’s voice is muffled in the din of the Avatar’s rage. “What’s going on?”

Aang— _Roku_ —does not acknowledge her.

“I’m sorry,” Zuko stammers. “I didn’t mean to, I swear!”

_(I’m sorry I spoke out of turn.)_

“You are a disgrace,” Roku roars. “I should have ended you and the rest of Sozin’s bloodline long ago.”

“What’s he talking about?” Sokka asks, glancing nervously at Katara.

Zuko barely hears him. _Sozin’s bloodline._ Roku said _Sozin’s bloodline._

“So Ozai is my father, then?”

Roku doesn’t reply. The flames reach higher, and Zuko’s breath catches in his throat.

“Are you going to kill me?”

The fire is spreading, spilling over the pile of kindling and igniting the grass in a searing wall. Roku steps through the flames, not stopping until he’s directly in front of Zuko, hands ablaze.

Zuko falls to his knees. 

“Please,” he begs. “Please, give me a chance to redeem myself.”

_(Please, Father. I only had the Fire Nation’s best interest at heart.)_

For a moment, he’s convinced Roku will burn him. (For a moment, he thinks it’s the least he deserves.)

But the fire fades, and Roku does, too, leaving a disoriented Aang stumbling backwards in his wake.

Zuko hardly dares to breathe.

Aang sways, bringing a hand to his forehead. Katara reaches out to steady him.

“Sweetie, what happened?” she asks gently.

“I don’t know,” Aang groans. “It’s like he just took over.”

“Who?”

“Roku,” Aang replies, leaning heavily against Katara’s side. “He was so _angry._ I had to stop him before he got violent.”

“It sounded like he was talking to someone,” Katara says. “But there’s no one else here.”

Aang closes his eyes, taking a deep breath.

“I can sense someone in the Spirit World nearby,” he says after a few moments.

Zuko looks to Sokka, who by all means should be cracking a joke about Aang’s “spirit face” right about now. But Sokka is silent, eyes guarded where they’re trained on the spot Aang ( _Roku)_ vacated.

His gaze pierces straight through Zuko’s chest. His heart stutters.

Sokka’s voice is barely a whisper when he speaks. “Zuko?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> canon whom??? 
> 
> (i hope my weird interpretation of the spirit world wasn’t too confusing, i drew a little from legend of korra but mostly just made it up as i went along)
> 
> also in case it isn’t clear i lowkey hate roku lol


	10. forgetful valley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you still sense the spirit?” Sokka asks Aang the next morning.
> 
> Aang, who barely looks even semi-conscious, closes his eyes for a moment. Just when Zuko is pretty sure the kid has fallen back to sleep, he opens his eyes and nods. “I think it wants us to go to Forgetful Valley.”
> 
> or: the gaang gets some answers. they are less than ideal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> veering a little bit back towards canon now, we’ll see how this goes

Zuko thinks he might die here, trapped under Sokka’s gaze.

He knows he can’t hear him, but he still whispers Sokka’s name like a prayer.

“Look,” Katara says slowly. “I know you want to talk to him, but Zuko isn’t here.”

She’s wrong, of course, but Zuko would seriously question her sanity if she thought otherwise.

Sokka shakes his head. 

“You heard what Roku said about ‘Sozin’s bloodline’.” He makes air quotes around the words, lowering his voice in an imitation of the Avatar. “Who else do we know that’s related to him?”

“Half of the crap Roku says doesn’t make any sense,” Katara argues. (Again, an incredibly valid point.)

“Aang said he sensed a presence, right?” Sokka says, not even pretending to acknowledge his sister. “What if Zuko’s stuck in the Spirit World?”

“I don’t know,” Aang says, fiddling nervously with his hands. “How would he even get there?”

“You’re the spirit guy, not me,” Sokka says with a shrug. “Besides, weirder spirit shit has happened to us before. Remember that time I got kidnapped by that giant bear?”

 _Giant bear?_ Zuko wonders.

“Well, whoever the spirit is, I think we should try to find them,” Aang eventually settles on.

“Better get to meditating, then,” Sokka says. “Time’s a-tickin’.”

Aang shakes his head. “I don’t think I can do anything else tonight. That stunt with Roku took a lot out of me.”

“But what if Zuko really _is_ trapped out there?” Sokka’s voice is uncharacteristically small.

Katara offers him a comforting pat on the shoulder. “Then we’ll do our best to find him tomorrow.”

Sokka looks like he wants to protest, but is simply too tired to.

 _I’m sorry_ , Zuko wants to shout. _I didn’t mean to hurt you._

Even if he was back in his physical body, he doubts Sokka would listen.

* * *

Time, apparently, works differently in the Spirit World. Agni chases Tui out of the sky in the blink of an eye, and soon Katara is dishing out breakfast.

“Do you still sense the spirit?” Sokka asks Aang.

Aang, who barely looks even semi-conscious, closes his eyes for a moment. Just when Zuko is pretty sure the kid has fallen back to sleep, he opens his eyes and nods.

“It feels like it’s pulling me.”

Zuko frowns as he sits down beside Sokka, because he is most definitely not _pulling him._

“Uh huh,” Sokka says. “So can you, like, pull it back?”

“I think it wants us to go to Forgetful Valley.”

“Why?” Zuko and Sokka ask at the same time.

Aang shrugs. “I don’t know, but I think we should check it out. Hey, maybe the wolf spirit will be there!”

Sokka launches into a tirade about what exactly he’ll do if he ever sees that monstrosity again while Katara and Aang finish eating.

When Sokka hands his bowl to Katara to wash and pack, he hasn’t taken a single bite.

* * *

Zuko trails behind the group as they enter the forest. If his “spirit” is telling Aang to go somewhere, that has to be his best bet at finding his body.

(He also doesn’t know how much longer he can bear being alone, much less without apologizing to Sokka.)

“So,” Aang says finally. “I think this must be it.”

“How do you know?” Sokka asks. “Are you detecting something with your special Avatar powers?”

Zuko snorts, wishing more than anything to be able to take Sokka’s hand in his. It would feel wrong, though, touching a part of Sokka without his permission. (More importantly, he isn’t sure he can handle the sensation of his fingers slipping right through Sokka’s palms.)

“No,” Aang says, chuckling. “It says so on the sign.”

He gestures to a plaque on a nearby tree, which does indeed spell out “Forgetful Valley” in faded characters.

“Oh,” Sokka says, blushing.

“So where do we go from here?” Katara asks, sparing her brother from his embarrassment. “I’m not sure there’s even a path.”

Aang swallows and raises a shaky finger. “Uh, guys?”

He points to a trail of ash-covered trees, incinerated straight down the middle to form a morbid sort of trail.

Zuko winces.

“I _told_ you!” Sokka exclaims. “Zuko’s here somewhere.”

“Yeah,” Katara mutters, “And he burnt down half the forest.”

Sokka begins to argue that it’s not Zuko’s fault ( _it definitely is_ ), but Aang cuts him off. “Quiet! I think I _am_ detecting something with my special Avatar powers.” 

He puts his head in his hands as though deep in thought. “It’s kind of making me wanna go…” He pauses, uncovering his face. “...Like this.”

“Oh, no,” Katara sighs. “Not the faces again!”

Zuko agrees; Aang’s bizarre expression is deeply unsettling, his mouth twisted into a half-frown and one eyebrow raised far above the other.

“Wait,” Sokka says. “I think Aang’s onto something. If you look carefully, there are actually faces all over the place.”

He grabs a massive leaf near his head, dragging it down for everyone to see the strange spotted pattern on it. “Check it out!”

“Sokka, stop!” Katara chides. “Aang can’t help it, but you’re just being a jerk.”

Sokka, as usual, ignores her. 

“And look at this squirrel-toad!” he continues, pointing to the animal perched on a thick vine above him. “And the trunk of that tree!”

He slides over to stand in front of it, using his fingers to stretch his eyes wide to mimic what is indeed a creepy face carved into the bark.

“And that giant flutter-bat over there!” He turns to Aang, whose expression is still stuck in the weird grimace. “The patterns on its wings sort of look like the face you’re making.”

Zuko barely processes his words—he’s too busy staring at the flutter-bat that _stole his fucking shirt_ the other day.

“You’re right!” Aang exclaims, summoning a gust of wind to lift himself up onto a nearby branch.

The demonic creature screeches and takes off.

“Wait up!” Aang shouts. “Mr. Flutter-Bat, where’d you go?”

He must spot it hanging somewhere else, because he summons a ball of air and glides through the trees. Sokka and Katara groan in tandem before racing after him, Zuko close behind.

“Aang?” Katara calls.

“I’m over here!”

They follow his voice into a clearing, in the middle of which is an uncomfortably familiar crystalline pool

Agni have mercy—he’d bathed in the Forgetful Valley.

“Wow!” Katara says, rushing to the pond’s edge. “I’ve never seen water so clear and still.”

“This feels familiar,” Aang says. “So...tranquil. It reminds me of Tui and La’s pool in the Northern Water Tribe.”

He steps closer to water’s edge, peering at his reflection before continuing. “Be respectful, everybody. This is a very spiritual place.”

“That’s right, Avatar.”

Zuko jolts, and Aang jumps no less than ten feet in the air.

“Who said that?” Aang asks, landing in a defensive stance.

The vines dangling from the canopy above them begin to move. Zuko feels the phantom sensation of them wrapping around his body, suffocating him.

“No!” he shouts, leaping between Aang and the slithering plants as though he can somehow protect him.

But the vines, strangely, don’t attack. Instead, they snake towards the trees around them, winding around branches and clearing a path for the two figures hidden behind them.

One of them, an elderly woman dressed in Water Tribe blues, releases a twirling hand as she steps out of the brush. At her side, arms linked together, is a man in a frankly terrifying wooden mask. The visage is featureless, save for two dark circles for eyes that seem to bore right into Zuko’s soul.

“You’re waterbenders,” Katara says breathlessly.

 _You’re the people who attacked and captured me_ , Zuko wants to add.

The woman, who introduces herself as Misu, nods at Katara. “Yes. Would you care for some stew?”

Zuko, for one, would much rather get some goddamn answers than some weird swamp meal that he can’t even _eat_ , but Katara looks so excited that not even Sokka, who’s busy glowering, can refuse.

His boyfriend’s face lights up the second he tries the strange green stew that Misu gives him. 

“This is delicious,” he says, licking away the broth caught above his upper lip. “It reminds me of…”

“The seaweed stew of the Northern Water Tribe?” Misu suggests.

“That’s it!”

Misu chuckles at Sokka’s enthusiasm. “Rafa and I make do with what we can find here.”

Rafa—whom Zuko assumes is the creepy mask guy—remains silent.

“So,” Katara starts, “How did two people from the Northern Water Tribe end up in a Fire Nation forest?”

Misu, apparently, takes this as an invitation to share her entire life’s story.

“Growing up, my brother and I were complete opposites,” she says, gently nudging Rafa. “I followed the rules, and he lived to break them.

“He’d often bring home things he’d stolen from our Tribe’s most powerful people,” she continues. “I would yell at him to return them, but the people he stole from were always so embarrassed that he never got into any real trouble.”

Zuko, who has been silently eyeing the waterbenders since he sat down at Sokka’s side, feels his glare beginning to slip away as Misu speaks.

“One day, his luck ran out. I found him alone on the ice, his face horribly disfigured.”

Zuko’s fingers unconsciously reach up towards his scar.

“It changed our lives forever,” Misu says, squeezing Rafa’s hand. “I took him to our people’s most experienced healers, but none of them could do a thing for him. Everything felt hopeless until I found an ancient Fire Nation scroll about a powerful spirit who would visit a forest— _this_ forest—from time to time.

“This spirit had the power to give people new faces. It had the power to heal Rafa.”

The scraping of chopsticks has gone silent, everyone staring at Misu, enraptured.

“I made it my life’s mission to bring my brother here. I knew it would be dangerous for two Water Tribe folk to sneak into the Fire Nation, so I spent years figuring out how to use waterbending to fight.”

 _And kidnap people, apparently_ , Zuko thinks bitterly.

“I had to learn secretly, on my own, since—“

“—in the Northern Water Tribe, women waterbenders were only able to heal,” Katara finishes for her. “Things are different now.”

The pride in Katara’s voice makes Zuko’s heart swell with a reminder that they had really done it—they had really ended the war.

“After many failed attempts, we finally made it to Forgetful Valley,” Misu explains. “We’ve lived here ever since, hoping to encounter the spirit.”

“Is it a wolf?” Aang asks eagerly. “We saw a giant spirit wolf the other day!”

“Yeah, when it tried to kill us,” Sokka grumbles.

“You have seen the great wolf spirit?” Misu says, eyes wide.

“Unfortunately,” Sokka replies. Katara smacks him in the arm.

“According to the texts, once facelike patterns begin to manifest in the forest, the wolf spirit will drink from one of the forest’s four pools. Whichever he chooses is where the spirit appears.” She pauses to gesture to the water beside them. “That is why the pool must remain undisturbed.”

Katara frowns. “You still haven’t met the spirit?”

Misu shakes her head. “She has passed through the Forgetful Valley many times since we arrived, but we seem to always be at the wrong pool.”

“I’m so sorry,” Katara says, placing a comforting hand on Misu’s arm.

“I thought this would be the time we finally met the spirit, but we must have missed her again.”

Misu’s expression shifts to something darker, and the humidity in the air turns to ice. “All because of that _ashmaker_.”

Zuko realizes, belatedly, that she’s referring to _him._ He somehow feels like an even _bigger_ asshole than before.

“Don’t use that word,” Sokka says with a protectiveness Zuko most definitely does not deserve.

Misu raises a brow, tugging at her wrinkled skin. “Don’t tell me you sympathize with those _tyrants_.”

“Listen, lady,” Sokka says, slamming his empty bowl onto the ground with far more force than necessary. “I know you’ve been in this forest for a while, but the war is _over_.”

“Sokka,” Katara says softly. “She’s just trying to help her brother.”

“Yeah? Well, why don’t you help _me_ and defend our _friends_?”

“I know you’re worried about Zuko, but—“

“How could you—“ Sokka begins to interrupt.

“We don’t even know it’s him!” Katara’s voice rings out over his, stunning the group into silence.

“Then why don’t we find out,” Sokka says, gritting his teeth as he turns to Misu. “What did you do with the firebender?”

Misu narrows her eyes. “He’s been taken care of.”

It hits Zuko, then, that he may be in the Spirit World because he’s _dead_. He really hopes Uncle will step in and take the throne, because if Azula finds out he’s gone…

“What in La’s name does _that_ mean?” Sokka snarls.

Misu scoffs. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

 _Well, that’s a relief._ It also means his body has to be somewhere around here, right?

He surveys the area, but nothing seems amiss. In all honesty, he’d half-expected to find himself lying in a ditch.

“Then where is he?” Sokka snaps.

Misu presses her lips into a thin line.

The forest grows quiet, save for the distant croaks of squirrel-toads.

It’s Aang who finally breaks the silence. “Misu, I know you said this person may have scared away the wolf spirit. What if I cross over into the Spirit World and try to get it to come here?”

Misu looks between Aang and her brother. “Do you think that will work?”

Aang grins. “I _am_ the Great Bridge—“

“Between Spirits and humans, we know,” Sokka says, voice tight. “Look, if he brings that wolf thing, will you tell us where the firebender is?”

Misu considers him for a moment before sighing. “If you help Rafa, I will be forever in your debt.”

Aang nods at her once before leaping through the air to the shore of the pool. Zuko and Sokka follow him, Katara opting to stay with the waterbenders. 

On one hand, Zuko understands that she’s been disconnected from a community hunted for generations. But on the other...well, he would like to think that after all this time she at least cares about him a _little_.

Aang situates himself in a meditative pose by the water’s edge, placing the tips of his fingers together in his lap. He closes his eyes and exhales, face mellowing into a look of serenity. His tattoos glow, and for a moment, Zuko is half-convinced Roku is about to come back and kill him.

Instead, a translucent Aang floats up from within his body to hover a few inches above the ground. He spins around, taking in the forest around him. When his gaze finally lands on Zuko, his eyes nearly bug right out of his head.

If the situation was any less fucked up, Zuko would be laughing.

“Hello,” he says instead, raising his hand in an awkward wave. “Zuko, here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coming up: the aang & zuko Talk™️ that everyone has been waiting for


	11. spirited away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aang’s jaw is dropped so low that Zuko’s surprised one of the Spirit World’s plethora of disgusting insects hasn’t flown inside of it yet.
> 
> or: aang, zuko, and the spirit world

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for discussion of abuse and reference to genocide

Aang’s jaw is dropped so low that Zuko’s surprised one of the Spirit World’s plethora of disgusting insects hasn’t flown inside of it yet.

“Look,” he starts, fidgeting under Aang’s wide-eyed stare. “You don’t have to say anything. Just know that I am so, _so_ sorry for the way I acted, and it won’t happen again. I understand if you don’t want to speak to me, but I, uh, kind of want to get back to my body.”

He thinks he explains himself fairly well, but Aang somehow looks even _more_ confused.

“So it _was_ you that they took?” he says finally.

“Er, yeah,” Zuko says. “I don’t remember much, but they trapped me with those creepy vines, and then I woke up here in the Spirit World, which...shouldn’t be possible, right?”

Aang shrugs. “Some places have stronger connections to the Spirit World than others. I think Forgetful Valley is one of them.”

Huh. Just his luck.

“Besides, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being the Avatar, it’s that the Spirits work in mysterious ways.” Aang pauses for a moment, and Zuko can practically see the gears turning in his head. “At the campfire...that was you, too?”

Zuko nods. “I get why Roku was upset, and you must be, too, but—“

“Zuko.” Aang looks at him with eyes far older than thirteen. “I forgive you.”

“Why?” The word slips out of his mouth before he even realizes he’s said it.

“You’re my friend,” Aang says. “That’s what friends do.”

Zuko glances over to Sokka, who’s now pacing by Aang’s eerily still body. “I’ve been a pretty shitty friend.”

“Sokka isn’t mad. None of us are.” Aang pauses, sighing. “I guess I just...don’t get it. Why did you run away?”

What the hell is he supposed to say to that? _Because I'm weak? Pathetic? Simultaneously a failure in my father’s eyes yet exactly how he conditioned me to be?_

“She said Ursa,” he says instead. The words scrape across his tongue like sandpaper. “Noriko, she—she said my mother’s name.”

“The lady who went to the Forgetful Valley?”

“Yeah,” Zuko forces past the lump in his throat. “It’s stupid. She disappeared years ago, and it might not even _be_ her _,_ but…”

“But you thought she forgot about you.”

Zuko nods, the motion stiff and jerky.

“I’m sorry,” Aang says. “The Air Nomads don’t really believe in parents, but Katara talks a lot about how hard it was to lose her mom.”

_“The Fire Nation took my mother away from me.”_

_“That’s something we have in common.”_

“I used to think she was dead,” Zuko admits. “Now, though...if she just moved on and left us there with him, I think that may be worse.”

“With who? Ozai?”

Zuko’s mind screeches to a halt. “What?”

“You said that, uh,” Aang says tentatively, “That she left you there with ‘him’, so I just sort of assumed…”

“Oh.” 

He hadn’t _meant_ to say it—to drag his father into an already nightmarish conversation—but now the words are out there, and he’s simultaneously drowning and trying to speak through a painfully dry throat.

 _How long does it take,_ he wonders, _for a Spirit to die of thirst?_

(He reasons that it’s been over a day since he left his body. Had it shriveled up in dehydration, twisted and mangled and perpetually denied like the shameful, treacherous _want_ that coils around his innards?)

Aang is still looking at him with those curious grey eyes that know far too much, and while he knows Aang would let the whole thing go if Zuko asked him to, a part of him _needs_ to explain, if only for the slim hope of redemption that he probably doesn’t deserve.

Zuko opens and closes his mouth a few times before finding any sort of words to explain the maelstrom in his head.

“My father,” he begins tentatively, “is not like Sokka and Katara’s.”

“Well, duh,” Aang says. “I mean, he was trying to wipe out the Earth Kingdom.”

It’s almost funny, the sin by which Aang has chosen to remember Ozai; it was, truth be told, a mere droplet in the ocean of his father’s transgressions that will always haunt Zuko far deeper than just his burnt skin.

“That’s not— _ugh_ ,” Zuko groans, swiping his hand down his face. “I’m not explaining myself very well, am I?”

“I mean...no, not really,” Aang says. “But you don’t have to tell me if you aren’t ready.”

“It’s not that, it’s just…”

How does one even _begin_ to explain that not all paternal love is unconditional to someone whose only reference for fatherhood is Hakoda, a man who, as he’d reiterated to Zuko multiple times, would rather skinny dip in the sea outside his village than harm a single hair on his children’s heads?

 _How do you not get it?_ a part of Zuko wants to scream at him. _You fought my father. Connect the dots!_

He knows, he _knows_ it isn’t Aang’s fault; he was raised in a community meant to nurture its children rather than mould them, one defined by love rather than blood. He’s never felt the heavy burden of royal honor thrust upon him, nor the consequences of failing to uphold it.

But he also knows that Aang, pacifist monk though he may be, spent a century in a block of ice and woke up in a world he no longer recognized. He is a child, yes—but a child of war, carrying the weight of an entire civilization on his shoulders.

“You asked yesterday,” he begins ( _fuck,_ _was it really only_ _yesterday_ _?_ ), “about what happened to my back.”

Aang nods slowly, and Zuko forces past the lump in his throat.

“This scar,” he says shakily, reaching up towards the mottled flesh around his left eye, “is not the only one my father gave me. And I think...I think my mother knew that and left anyways.”

For a moment, Aang is still. His slightly open mouth is the only disruption in the stoic marble of skin, unmoving like the statues of his past lives collecting dust alongside the airbenders’ unmarked graves, decomposing and withering until the boy before him was the only one that remained.

Zuko had hurled his guts up over the side of the Air Temple when he’d first seen the piles of bones strewn carelessly on the tiles beneath his unsteady feet. It could have been the fever radiating from the infected flesh barely clinging to the left side of his face, but he’d sworn he could hear screaming.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

Aang’s voice is barely a whisper when he eventually speaks. He does not weep and pray for Agni’s mercy, as Uncle had done at Zuko’s bedside while his small, half-conscious body shivered and his delirious mind called out for his mother; nor does he collapse and howl curses at the stars, as Sokka had done when Zuko confirmed the nefarious, rumor-fueled notions festering in his brain after their stint in prison.

“I’m not looking for anyone’s pity,” Zuko says, keeping his eyes trained on the ground.

“Does Sokka…?”

“Yeah,” Zuko says, “He knows. But, uh, you’re the only other person I’ve told.”

 _Everyone else either read the royal decree or had the honor of witnessing the spectacle themselves,_ he doesn’t add.

“Thank you for trusting me.”

“I know it doesn’t excuse my actions,” Zuko says, “but I would be forever in your debt if you give me a chance to make it up to you.”

He bites his lip, slowly lifting his head to watch Sokka as he paces. “All of you.”

“Of course.” Aang looks like he wants to say more, but he’s quick to tuck it away under his trademark enthusiasm. “Now let’s go find that wolf spirit!”

“And we do that...how, exactly?”

Aang shrugs, the usual spring already back in his step. It’s comforting, really; Zuko had been steeling himself for a litany of undue apologies and uncomfortable attempts at sympathy.

“Wait, look!” Aang exclaims. “It’s Mr. Flutter-Bat!”

Zuko thinks, as he watches Aang leap towards the huge creature, that maybe he would prefer the pity over the return of his least favorite spirit animal.

The flutter-bat shifts where it hangs upside-down in a nearby tree as Aang approaches, shouting, “I knew we were meant to be friends!”

The flutter-bat stares at his self-proclaimed “friend” for a moment before spreading its wings, revealing the strange, glowing markings that seem to lurk in every shadowy corner of this godforsaken forest.

Then, as if the shirt-stealing, freaky-looking flutter-bat couldn’t get any worse, the thing _speaks._

“Come with me,” it says, its deep voice reverberating through the woods surrounding them. “I will show you what you want to see.”

It releases its grip on the branch, flapping its wings a few times before landing in front of them.

“Come on!” Aang says, grabbing Zuko’s hand and dragging him towards the flutter-bat.

“Uh, Aang?” Zuko says, eyeing the razor-sharp talons that are already far too close for comfort. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

Aang lets go of Zuko to jump onto the flutter-bat’s back, kneeling between its wings. “You’re just scared it’s gonna steal your shirt again.”

“I am _not_!” Zuko splutters.

“Prove it.”

Zuko looks between Sokka, who’s wringing his hands and muttering to himself in stress; the flutter-bat, who is probably plotting to send him plummeting to his death the second it takes to the air; and Aang, who’s fixing him with a grin somewhere between encouraging and smug.

“Fine,” he relents, climbing on behind Aang.

He barely has time to grab the hem of Aang’s robes before the flutter-bat begins to flap its wings, rising with nauseating speed.

Sure, it makes sense that an airbender wouldn’t be clinging for dear life while in flight—but how the hell did the giant, talking flutter-bat _not_ inspire at least a _little_ bit of unease?

“Whoa!” Aang says, leaning forward excitedly (and nearly sending Zuko into cardiac arrest). “You can see the whole forest from here!”

Zuko is too busy clinging to the flutter-bat’s weird, spirit-y back to sightsee. He would say as much, but if he opens his mouth, he’s either going to puke in the spirit-trees or unleash a string of curses that only come from spending his formative years surrounded by sailors.

But, as he learned approximately two minutes into their flight to see the Sun Warriors, Aang has no qualms about filling even the shortest gaps of silence himself.

Case and point: the chatterbox in front of him is already detailing the four spirit pools— _“they’re like perfect panes of glass!”_ —and, moments later, the wolf spirit sprinting through the trees.

“Mr. Flutter-Bat, we have to talk to that spirit!” Aang says.

The flutter-bat listens, and flies down low enough for Aang to hop off onto the ground—unfortunately, he grabs Zuko’s wrist and drags him down with him.

He stumbles as Aang tugs him along, his short legs surprisingly fast as he attempts to keep pace with the wolf spirit.

“Hello, big giant spirit wolf!” he calls, barely even panting.

(Agni, the _lung capacity_ of this kid.)

In a strange act of karmic mercy, the wolf spirit slows down. Zuko takes the opportunity to catch his breath; Aang bounds up to the wolf’s enormous leg, waving excitedly.

“Now that you see I can cross over to the Spirit World too,” Aang says, “You must feel a little embarrassed about puking moth-wasps at me and my friends.”

Zuko shudders at the memory.

“Don’t worry, I don’t hold grudges!”

The universe, apparently, does, because it’s only then that Zuko notices they’ve stopped at the bank of a spirit pool.

“Uh, Aang?” he says nervously. “I think we have bigger problems than the wolf’s self-esteem.”

He jerks his head towards the spirit, which is leaning its head dangerously close to a pool that, unfortunately, is _not_ the one that holds Zuko’s only chance at returning to the material world.

“Hey!” Aang yells, waving his arms frantically as he leaps towards the wolf. “Don’t drink from here! There’s a pool over there that tastes even better, trust me!”

The spirit turns to stare at Aang, who’s placed himself between the wolf’s snout and the pool. Zuko is no expert in Avatar-Spirit interactions, but this doesn’t exactly seem like a productive conversation.

“We need to lead it back to the other pool,” Zuko says, planting himself at Aang’s side and trying not to shudder and the spirit’s warm breath on his face.

“How?” Aang says, glancing at Zuko nervously.

Zuko, funnily enough, is wondering the exact same thing. He needs to come up with a _plan,_ dammit, because Aang literally jumped off the side of an objectively terrifying flutter-bat and threw himself in front of a dangerous wolf spirit for the sake of helping him return to his body. (And, he supposes, helping those waterbenders, but that’s beside the point.)

_Wait._

“Aang,” he says slowly. “Can you bend here?”

“No one can bend in the Spirit World, Zuko.” The confused furrow of his brow broadcasts _“you’re an idiot”_ loud and clear.

And maybe he is, but he _knows_ what he saw: Aang, falling from ridiculous heights without slamming into the ground; Aang, launching himself a ridiculously far distance to prevent the wolf from drinking; Aang, _airbending._

“Please,” Zuko says. “Just try.”

Aang looks skeptical, but humors him anyways. He holds out his palm, frowning at it for a moment.

Then he summons a miniature tornado.

“Whoa!” Aang says, bouncing on the balls of his feet excitedly. “I’ve never been able to bend in the Spirit World before!”

Zuko doesn’t respond for a second, still reeling from the fact that it _actually worked._

“Can you bend anything other than air? Like...maybe fire?”

Aang shrugs before closing his fingers into a fist, squashing the small torrent of air. When he opens his hand, a flame dances in the center of it.

Zuko grins.

“Okay,” he says. “Here’s the plan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, this was...a chapter. i had some trouble figuring out exactly how i wanted to end it/bridge to the next segment, but i think i finally worked it out so stay tuned


	12. wolf teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing is, Zuko is no stranger to flirting with death. He’s been crawling his way back from the reaper’s doorstep since he took his first breath, clinging to the land of the living like a stubborn hippo-ox despite the universe’s numerous attempts to send him toppling over the edge.
> 
> or: zuko’s master plan (and lack thereof)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for referenced abuse, brief internalized homophobia and dissociation, and a pinch of violence (for flavor)
> 
> everyone: how can aang bend in the spirit world?  
> me, who mostly just put it there bc i needed it as a plot device: uh yeah he has avatar spirit magic haha

The thing is, Zuko is no stranger to flirting with death. He’s been crawling his way back from the reaper’s doorstep since he took his first breath, clinging to the land of the living like a stubborn hippo-ox despite the universe’s numerous attempts to send him toppling over the edge.

He’s tasted his father’s cruelty, his lightning and fire and blind obedience to Azulon’s orders. He’s felt Zhao’s murderous rage as he’d ripped his ship to shreds around him and tried to drag him back to the Caldera in chains. He’s been thrown off cliffs and electrocuted and hypothermic and stabbed, yet his weary body still had not given out.

But his meager luck has run dry; this time, when he falls, he will not be getting up again.

Who knew the Fire Lord would meet his end on the back of a flutter-bat?

“We have to go faster!” Aang urges from behind him.

 _“Faster?”_ Zuko shouts, nearly in hysterics.

His hands tremble as he clutches the flutter-bat’s neck, scrambling for nonexistent purchase in the short, coarse hairs covering its leathery skin. The wind roars around him, blowing his hair into his mouth and making it incredibly difficult to curse every entity under the sun.

“It’s gaining on us!”

Aang throws another barrage of fireballs at the wolf sprinting beneath them, and the spirit howls as it swallows them. 

(Zuko really, _really_ wishes his plan hadn’t worked quite so well.)

Steeling himself and sending a quick prayer up to the gods, he digs his heels into the flutter-bat’s sides just above its wings.

“Hold on!” he says as the creature lurches forward, feeling Aang grab his arm to keep their backs pressed together.

His next round of one-handed fire veers wide, but he doesn’t slide off the edge, so Zuko counts it as a win.

“I think I see the pool up ahead!”

That’s another unfortunate part of the plan: with Aang acting as the wolf-baiter, _Zuko_ has to navigate.

Aang whoops. “Mr. Flutter-Bat, drop us off by the water please!”

The flutter-bat, which refuses to listen to any of Zuko’s instructions, drops into a dive. He feels his stomach flip and his organs threaten to fly up and out of his throat. (So no, Zuko isn’t bitter that this monster won’t follow his commands—he wants absolutely _nothing_ to do with it.)

When the creature finally stops its descent of doom in the clearing, it’s only Zuko’s incredible lightheadedness that allows him to unclench his cramping hands from the flutter-bat’s excuse for fur.

He drops to the ground at its side, rubbing at his head and struggling to catch his breath.

Aang, as usual, lands gracefully on his feet.

“Okay,” he says, holding out a hand and hoisting Zuko up to stand. “I’m gonna cross back and get your body.”

“How do I,” Zuko wheezes, “do that?”

“I’ll walk you through it!” Aang says. “See you on the other side.”

“You know that’s what people say when they die, right?”

Aang misses his incredibly valid point as he jerks back into his physical form with a small gasp.

“Aang, you’re back!” Katara exclaims, hurrying to his side. “Are you hurt?”

Aang shakes his head, letting Katara wrap him in a hug and only pulling back when Sokka clears his throat.

“So,” he says, trying and failing to act casual, “did you find anyone on your spirit journey?”

“Yeah,” Aang says, glancing over to the spot Zuko still hasn’t vacated as he tries to calm his thundering pulse. “You were right.”

The palpable relief on Sokka’s face makes Zuko feel embarrassingly mushy inside. The look soon turns to shock as the wolf spirit bursts through the trees.

Sokka’s fear isn’t necessary, though; the spirit only has eyes for Zuko.

It lunges towards him with a growl, gnashing teeth far too close to his head for comfort. Zuko curses as he dives out of the way, landing on his side with a _thud._

“What the fuck is it doing?” Sokka yells.

“I think it’s going for Zuko!” Aang says. “We need to get him out of the Spirit World!”

Sokka’s eyes harden as he whirls around to face the two waterbenders standing a few paces away. “Where’s his body?”

“The Avatar promised us the Mother of Faces,” Misu says. “That was our agreement.”

“Are you fucking _kidding me?”_ Sokka shrieks. “This thing is trying to kill him!”

The glint in Misu’s eyes makes it clear that she doesn’t care in the slightest.

The spirit slams its massive paw into the dirt, and Zuko only narrowly manages to avoid becoming a human ( _spirit?_ ) pancake.

“We don’t have time for this,” Sokka snaps, crossing his arms. “Katara, can you find him with your waterbending?”

“What?”

“You know,” Sokka says, “like Toph with her feet.”

“Yeah!” Aang chimes in. “Zuko said they tied him up with vines. If we can trace the water in them…”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Katara says, stepping into a waterbending stance.

She inhales deeply, spreading her arms wide and closing her eyes. She spins slowly in a circle as she breathes; Zuko thinks he would find it a lot more mesmerizing if he wasn’t still playing a high-stakes game of tag with a wolf spirit.

“There!” she says, opening her eyes and pointing to a large, vine-covered tree. “Someone’s in there.”

She pulls her arms back towards her chest with a sharp exhale, tugging forth a tangle of vines from within a hollowed section of the trunk. She lowers it to the ground in front of her, peeling back the layers of plants to reveal a pale, bruised body cocooned inside.

“Zuko!” Sokka shouts, sliding to his knees beside his body.

And it is, undeniably, his body. It’s his hands, calloused from years of sword-wielding; his face, warped and scarred; his broad chest, barely rising and falling.

He watches as Sokka brings his hands to his cheeks, gently shaking his limp head. Zuko thinks he should be able to feel it, Sokka’s warm fingers trailing over his skin. Instead, he feels a strange disconnect, as though the body was never his to begin with.

Misu looks between Sokka’s anguished face and Aang’s concerned hovering, guilt and fear warring for prominence in her expression.

“Please forgive me, Avatar,” she says, kneeling before him. “I only wanted to save my brother.”

“By hurting someone else?” Sokka says indignantly, gesturing to Zuko’s forehead.

Upon closer inspection, he can see a gash near his hairline, dry blood flaking down his cheek. _How,_ he wonders, _does a shell of a corpse even bleed?_

Katara crouches beside Sokka and summons a glove of water to her hand, bringing it to the wound. Then she frowns, because the second the glowing liquid touches his skin, it slips away in a ripple of clear droplets.

“Something’s wrong,” she says, furrowing her brow. “It’s like his chi is all off.”

Zuko would have found that strange prognosis incredibly intriguing if his shoulder hadn’t suddenly erupted in a torrent of pain.

“Fuck!” he curses, slapping his hand onto the epicenter of the pain as soon as the pressure abates.

Agony pulses through him in waves, and his vision whites out for a moment. When it clears, he can see the wolf standing over him, growling as blood drips from its fangs. It’s a strange, translucent blue, yet he somehow recognizes it as _his;_ if he could remove his hand from his shoulder without passing out from the pain, he’s sure the warm liquid gurgling beneath his palm would be the same hue.

He isn’t sure what the rest of his companions see from outside the Spirit World, but from Katara’s shocked gasp and the pallor of Sokka’s face, it can’t be anything too pretty.

“You need to come back so Katara can heal you!” Aang shouts. “Without your spirit, there’s nothing she can do!”

His voice cracks just on the edge of panic, and there’s really nothing Zuko would like more than to be out of this spirit-filled nightmare.

But the thing is, just as he perpetually greets death like an old friend, he’s even more intimately familiar with the sheer sorrow and desperation on Misu’s face. The way she clutches her brother’s arm, the way she is willing to sacrifice _everything_ for a chance at his happiness.

He remembers his last trip to Ember Island, the last time he’d spoken to Azula outside the heat of battle.

_She found him on the porch outside their beach house, head in his hands. “I thought I’d find you here.”_

_She sounded almost sympathetic, the way she leaned on the support beam beside him with her arms gently crossed._

_Zuko sighed. “Those summers we spent here seem so long ago. So much has changed.”_

_Azula’s mouth quirked up at the corner._

_“Come down to the beach with me,” she said. “Come on. This place is depressing.”_

_He followed her silently to the shore, gaze trained on the ground. He perked up at the sight of Mai, trying to rest a hand on her shoulder in a last-ditch effort to salvage whatever was left of their botched attempt at love._

_She slapped his hand away._

_It shook, fingers wracked with tiny tremors even as he clawed through the remnants of their vacation home, gathering up the pieces of his shattered past to use as kindling in a new age of freezing misery._

_He felt the bonfire raging like the one within him, burning and consuming and_ destroying. _The sick vindication as he tossed a family portrait into the flames—melting his disconcertingly unblemished face into a far more recognizable mess of ash—tasted awfully like vomit._

_Azula asked about the source of his neverending anger._

_“Is it Dad?”_

_“Answer the question, Zuko.”_

_“Come on, answer it!”_

_“I’m angry at myself!” he shouted, the words ripping through his vocal cords._

_The fire roared between them, a column of heat reaching up to the stars._

_“Why?” Azula asked._

_“Because I'm confused,” he replied. “Because I'm not sure I know the difference between right and wrong anymore.”_

_“You’re pathetic.”_

_She wasn’t wrong, and they both knew it. A part of Zuko was always weak, a spark of wrongness and disgrace that his father never truly managed to put out._

_“Oh yeah?” he goaded. “Because you’re just_ so _perfect.”_

_“Well, yes, I guess you're right,” Azula said. “I don't have sob stories like all of you. I could sit here and complain how our mom liked Zuko more than me, but I don't really care.”_

_She smirked, something dangerous in her eyes. “My own mother thought I was a monster. She was right, of course, but it still hurt.”_

_They’d crashed that asshole’s party, afterwards, stealing the leftover booze and spending the rest of the night stumbling drunkenly on the beach. He’d kissed Mai and told himself he felt something._

_He left a few days later without saying goodbye._

_Azula was different, later, at the Agni Kai. Her hair in disarray, her usual poise fraying at the seams._

_“Why did our relationship have to be like this?” he’d shouted._

_He didn’t want to fight her. He didn’t want to, because deep down she was still his little sister, she always would be—but this was war, and they both knew it._

_“I’m sorry it has to end this way, brother,” she’d said._

_There was no uncertainty in his response: “No, you’re not.”_

He sees what they could have been—maybe, just _maybe,_ what they could still be—in the fierce, protective dedication in Misu’s eyes as she clutches her brother’s arm.

He’d asked Sokka, the other night, if he thought Azula would ever forgive him. But he knows, now, just as he knew then, that it doesn’t matter in the end: he will do _anything_ to keep Azula safe, even if it means removing himself from her life.

Misu and Rafa’s relationship is not yet condemned to that fate, and he has the power to prevent the final nail from hammering into that coffin.

He jumps towards the wolf, latching onto its jowls with slippery hands. He feels blood and spittle threatening to dislodge his grip as the spirit tosses its head back and forth, and he digs his fingers into the inner lining of its cheek with a renewed determination. His shoulder screams in pain as the pierced muscles clench. He grits his teeth and, tapping into whatever adrenaline-fueled strength he has left, swings his legs up towards the wolf’s ears. The motion stings the back of his thighs, his hamstrings on the verge of snapping.

Then, with all the force he can muster, he kicks his feet back down. The momentum sends the spirit’s head careening towards the water, unable to stop itself before its snout breaches past the surface, bringing Zuko down with it.

His back slams onto the bottom of the pool, his head following seconds later and giving him whiplash. It knocks the breath out of his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and Zuko can’t stop himself from taking an aborted gasp for oxygen that sends water pouring down his throat.

He pushes weakly against the wolf’s mouth, every motion jostling the wound in his shoulder and tightening the suffocation constricting his chest. His vision is splotchy around the edges, but it’s okay, because the spirit drank from the pool. He gives up on thrashing as the world fades into darkness around him.

He hopes Misu and Rafa find what they’re looking for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i said comfort this chapter, but i kind of got carried away with this flashback plotline (aka justice for azula pt 2)


	13. iron lungs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Just breathe,” a soft voice says. “That’s it, just breathe.”
> 
> or: zuko rejoins the land of the living

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for references to abuse and brief mentions of drug use, alcohol, internalized homophobia and (implied) sex
> 
> ((no the title is not about polio yes it is inspired by sad boi hours of radiohead))

The water burns as it crawls up his throat. He gasps, choking and spluttering as he curls onto his side. His coughs are wet, spraying the dirt around him with murky water and blood-tinged bile.

A warm hand claps him between his shoulder blades, sending more of the repugnant liquid rushing out of his mouth. When he dares to suck in a breath, heart spasming out of control, the influx of oxygen into his shriveled lungs sends him into another hacking fit.

“Just breathe,” a soft voice says. “That’s it, just breathe.”

He struggles up to his hands and knees, shaking. His windpipe still feels too small, and his neck constricts with each rough rush of water from between his lips. He wheezes as he desperately searches for air, and despite the vice squeezing his sternum, his head feels ready to float into the ether.

“Katara? A little help here?”

There’s an ocean inside him, tides pushing and pulling behind his ribcage. The waves suddenly crest, ripping through him like a dagger of ice as the water inside him splatters onto the ground below. Arctic air rushes down his trachea, so cold it _burns._

He forces himself to breathe past the pain, drawing in deeper inhales when it becomes clear that the water choking him is gone. His hands, braced against the ground before him, slowly slide back into focus.

“What happened?” he tries to ask.

The words tangle in his throat, which is somehow impossibly dry, and he allows the gentle hand that lands on his shoulder to guide him back to sit fully upright.

“It’s okay. You’re okay.”

He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, focusing on the infuriatingly difficult task of breathing. Someone’s rubbing circles between his shoulder blades, and he leans back into the soothing motion.

“You’re okay,” the voice repeats. “You’re safe now.”

Zuko cracks his eyes open slowly, wincing at the bright light but soon adjusting.

“Sokka?” he rasps.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

Sokka’s voice is the most gorgeous thing he’s ever heard. He tries to push himself closer on trembling arms only for Sokka to close the distance himself, using the arm around his shoulder to tuck Zuko into his side.

“‘m sorry,” Zuko mumbles, turning his head in towards Sokka’s neck. “‘m so, _so_ sorry.”

He shivers as Sokka wraps his arms around him. 

“Don’t be,” he says. “I forgive you. It’s okay.”

“But your arm,” Zuko protests weakly.

“I don’t give a shit about my arm. I just—I thought I was gonna lose you again.”

Sokka presses a long kiss to the crown of his head, and Zuko feels the tension slowly bleeding out of his body.

It returns with a renewed vigor when a thundering voice booms, “Someone dares ride my wolf as if she were some common beast of burden?”

If Zuko wasn’t already on the ground, the sight before him would have knocked him flat on his ass.

A massive spirit swirls out of the pool in an amalgamation of twisting branches and streams of light, steep shoulders jutting out over long, gnarled arms. Its clawed fingers, each approximately the size of Zuko’s entire body, are overshadowed in creepiness only by the spirit’s face—or, rather, _faces._

A ring of milky white visages surrounds the spirit’s head, only mouth and nose visible. The spots where eyes should be are covered in more hardened bramble, snaking up in points like a horned crown.

Sokka’s arm tightens around him. “I mean, I wouldn’t exactly say he was _riding_ it.”

The spirit turns to leer at him, six pairs of lips upturning in sneers. Around her, a swarm of ghostly faces emerges. The apparitions could almost be mistaken as masks—a torrent of humans and creatures of all shapes, sizes, and expressions—if not for the slight ripple of their features, as though breathing.

“You _dare_ speak to me like that, mortal?” she spits in a cacophony of overlapping voices.

“Yeah, I do,” Sokka says, his words dripping with a similar vitriol. “Your _wolf_ just tried to kill my boyfriend, so I’d say a little dunk in the pool is the _least_ it deserves.”

The water bubbles and hisses as the spirit snarls at him, boiling like the volcanic moat in which Zuko nearly fell to his death. Instead of steamy air, however, more translucent faces rise to the surface.

“I am the Mother of Faces,” she proclaims. “Through me, separateness came into the world. Through me, came identity. The one became the many.”

“Sounds like a lot of spirit bullshit to me.”

“ _Sokka,”_ Katara hisses, shooting him a glare. “Be respectful.”

“I walk through my forest once a season, but never have I strayed from the path my wolf chooses for me,” the spirit says. “You think _you_ have the power to sway destiny?”

“Please forgive us, Mother of Faces,” Aang says, stepping in front of Sokka and Zuko. “I’m the Avatar, the Great Bridge between humans and Spirits.”

“I know who you are,” she says coolly. “My qualm is not with you.”

“Our friends here,” Aang says, gesturing to the waterbenders, “have spent years seeking your help.”

Misu nods, prostrating herself before the spirit.

“Please,” she says. “Forgive their transgressions. We have waited many decades praying for your consort.”

“So you thought to manipulate me?” 

Another wave of pale, unseeing faces bubbles up around her. They burst from beneath the other faces already at the surface, pulsing and shuddering over one another in a torrent of overlapping, blank stares. Their mouths fall open in silent screams, and Zuko swears he can hear the echoes of agonized cries.

Goosebumps prickle over his skin, sightless, empty eyes boring into him. He feels pinned, trapped once again under the water as the faces push him down, leaving him thrashing beneath the surface.

There’s phantom water filling his lungs, drowning him as his frantic gaze darts between the faces until it reaches one that cuts straight to the core of his frazzled psyche.

Because he recognizes it. He recognizes those golden eyes as the ones that traipse through his dreams, both good and bad. He recognizes that curtain of dark hair, smooth under his uncoordinated fingers as he attempts to braid it. He recognizes those high cheekbones, the soft lips that brushed his forehead and soothed his tears.

“Mom?”

The croak that leaves him sounds inhuman, laden with an amalgamation of hurt and, even worse, _hope._

The Mother of Faces turns to him, and he gulps.

“You—her—that’s my mother’s face.”

“That is correct, Son of Ursa.”

Her words slam into him like a komodo-rhino, knocking a gasp out of him.

The spirit seems to consider him for a moment before speaking again. “Though my summons were false, I am a kind-hearted spirit.”

“Yeah, right,” Sokka mutters.

“As has been my benevolent way each season for centuries, I will grant you humans one favor. Do you wish to know of your mother’s fate?”

Every fiber of Zuko’s being is screaming _yes._ Finally, the answer he’s spent years searching for is within reach. The most painful thing taken by Ozai’s cruelty, far worse than his lost sight or hearing ( _or honor or childhood_ ), is dangling right in front of him. It would be so unbelievably _easy_ to agree to the spirit’s offer and quell the burning curiosity and guilt that follows him like a shadow, gnawing on him like a parasite.

“Only one?” His voice is barely a whisper, eyes roaming between Misu and the spirit.

“Do not test my generosity,” she replies tightly.

Misu lowers herself further onto the ground, arms stretched so far forward that the tips of her fingers nearly touch the water.

He knelt like that, once, begging for forgiveness and having his birthright (and half of his face) stripped from him instead.

“They’ve waited for so long,” he says, looking at where the spirit’s eyes should be. “If there’s only one favor, it should be theirs.”

Misu gasps in surprise, rising to stand on shaky legs. She takes Rafa’s hand in hers, pulling him to the edge of the pool beside her.

“M-mother of Faces,” she stammers, “on behalf of my b-brother, I ask—“

“ _No._ ” Sokka’s voice is hard as flint, steely as the glare twisting his features.

“What are you doing?” Katara asks, eyes narrowed.

Sokka removes his arm from around Zuko to stand, leaving him scrambling to maintain any semblance of balance.

“You people don’t get to almost _kill him_ ,” he says, pointing at Zuko, “and then take this away from him.”

“Sokka, it’s fine,” Zuko says, wrapping a hand around his boyfriend’s ankle.

“No, it’s not! You’ve waited so long for this.”

“I’ve made peace with it.” That’s a lie, of course, and even a stranger like Misu can see right through it.

“You think I don’t hear your nightmares? You wake up _screaming_ for her.”

Zuko flinches and does his damnedest to keep his tone level when he speaks. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It _does_ ,” Sokka insists. “I won’t let that bastard take anything else from you.”

 _That bastard,_ he says, as though the word _father_ doesn’t apply. (As though Zuko hasn’t been built up and torn down over and over and over again by the man embedded in his very being.)

The raw sincerity radiating from him has Zuko close to crying. It’s warm like Sokka’s arms, wrapped around him as he fumbled through a teary recounting of his grandfather’s plot to kill him, of his father’s words ripping through him with an agony worse than his lightning.

_“Don’t you want to know what happened to your mother?”_

Is he playing right into Ozai’s hands, if he runs blindly, _selfishly,_ towards this answer?

In the end, it is not his choice to make.

“Tell us where Ursa is.”

Sokka’s voice does not waver. He does not lose the strength of his composure, even as Aang cries out and Katara turns to him in horror. Even as Misu wails at the water’s edge, falling back to her knees

Zuko feels numb. Is this what the spectators heard, when he screamed and writhed in that arena? Is this what they cheered for? Is this as broken as he sounded as a young boy, bruised and and burned and embarrassed, before his father taught him to hide his shameful sobbing?

“Ursa,” the Mother of Faces says. “Very well.”

She holds out a clawed hand and projects an image of his mother in her palm.

“I remember her,” she says. “I could not understand why a human of such beauty would ask for a new face.”

 _And she is,_ Zuko thinks. _Utterly, breathtakingly beautiful._

“To test her sincerity, I offered her one as plain as can be.”

The mirage shifts, now, his mother’s features losing their sharpness. Her cheeks become fuller, her eyebrows thicker; her eyes, once molten gold, darken to an earthy brown.

“She accepted.”

A chorus of gasps erupt around him. They echo in his brain, which reels in overtime as he tries to process the sight in front of him. Words stick in his throat, and his tongue is suddenly too big for his mouth.

He thought he was drowning before, but that breathless desperation doesn’t hold a candle to the asphyxiation currently crushing him in its talons. His heart is simultaneously hammering out of control and deathly still, trapped in the too-small chest of his reanimated corpse.

He must have died, at some point—maybe in the Spirit World, or maybe during that Agni Kai. (Maybe he’s been decomposing since the night his mother left.)

It doesn’t make sense. _It doesn’t make sense._

He wants to say that it’s a joke. He wants to rise with the sun in his bed as Sokka teases him for being unable to handle his cactus juice, or on Mai’s couch after smoking too many herbs in another failed attempt to make his traitorous body react to her exposed skin. Hell, he’d even settle for waking up to Jet’s lumpy mattress pressing into his bare, sweat-soaked back, counting the minutes before he has to sneak home and praying that Uncle doesn’t smell the cheap Earth Kingdom liquor on his breath.

When he finally speaks, it’s barely a whisper. Any louder, he thinks, and it must be true. But it can’t be. _It can’t._

“Noriko?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so there’s finally some of the comfort i promised y’all (but also more hurt bc that’s just who i am)
> 
> zuko was a rebellious angsty teenager and i stand by that


	14. false form

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Has he been kidding himself, all this time? Has he always known, deep down, that Ursa and Noriko are one and the same?
> 
> or: everything makes far too much sense

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for references to abuse

His head is buzzing. It’s loud, _too loud_ , and he can barely hear his own thoughts through the static.

_“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done to protect you.”_

Is that even his mother’s voice, warped and reverberating through the hollows of his skull?

_“No matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are.”_

The words are tangled in his brain in an echo so intense that he swears he can feel it dripping out of his ears in hot, syrupy blood.

 _“Your mother did vicious, treasonous things that night,”_ his father had hissed.

He sees the lightning arcing out of Ozai’s fingers, crackling through the air in a chain of destruction. It buries Zuko under the rubble of the walls he once built, denial stamped into each and every brick.

_“Though I was trapped in the body of a mortal, you willingly gave me your heart. I cannot help but give you mine in return.”_

_The Dragon Emperor holds the Water Spirit close, two sides of the same coin. Tui and La. Push and pull._

_Noren and Noriko._

_“Only with your glory hidden in false form could you finally recognize my devotion.”_

Has he been kidding himself, all this time? Has he always known, deep down, that Ursa and Noriko are one and the same?

The facts are piling up around him, damning and hopelessly undeniable. It can’t be a coincidence, the way that Kiyi’s eight years of age align seamlessly with the hole his mother left in his life; just as it can’t be mere happenstance that the fingerprints burned onto the small of Noriko’s back are identical to the ones seared over and over into Zuko’s own skin.

“Why?” It’s all he can force from the desert of his throat.

 _Why_ did she leave? _Why_ did she forget him?

( _Why didn’t she take him with her?)_

“I had never seen such pain in a human before,” the Mother of Faces says. “I asked if a new face would relieve her of it.”

“Did it?” His voice cracks on the words.

“She told me her pain came from the memories of a life she did not choose for herself.” The spirit’s words are emotionless, a simple recitation of facts. (Why, then, did they hurt so fucking much?)

“I offered her a new mind, one that did not remember the life that came before.”

Zuko realizes, numbly, that he is part of that life.

“She accepted.”

“I see.” He tries to keep himself under control, but it’s no use.

Tears burn in his single, functional eye, stinging like the knowledge that his mother doesn’t even remember the sight of his unmarred face.

“This is all the knowledge I can offer you, Fire Lord Zuko,” the Mother of Faces says. (If Zuko didn’t know better, he’d say she almost sounds remorseful.)

The spirit turns, branches popping and snapping as she begins to sink into the depths of the pool.

“Wait!” Misu sobs. “Don’t leave us yet, I beg of you!”

She rises from her spot on the ground and sweeps her arms in wide arcs. Thick streams of water rise at her command, winding around the spirit’s crouched body and stopping her descent.

“Foolish human!” the Mother of Faces snaps. “You _dare_ bend the water of my secret pool?”

“We’ve spent years waiting for you,” Misu says, still holding the water under her will.

“She didn’t mean any disrespect, Your Face-iness,” Aang says hurriedly. “She just—“

“Goodbye, Avatar.” Her harsh words linger as the spirit disappears under the water with a splash that echoes with finality.

“No, please—come back!” Aang shouts, clenching his fists for a moment before pressing his palms together over his head and diving in after her.

“Aang!” Katara says, nearly tripping into the pool herself.

When it becomes evident that Aang isn’t emerging any time soon (he can, after all, breathe underwater with his airbending), she rounds on Sokka. “How _could_ you?”

Tears stream down her cheeks as she points a shaking finger at Misu, who rests her head on Rafa’s shoulder.

“They’ve been waiting for this for so long! How could you be so—“ she pauses, as though searching for the right word in the depths of her rage. “So _selfish_?”

Zuko recoils at the venom in her words, sliding back towards the treeline as Sokka stomps closer to his sister.

“ _I’m_ being selfish? How many times has Zuko almost died for us? For _you_?”

Zuko feels a ghostly spark of lightning within the scar on his sternum. From the way Katara flinches, it’s clear she remembers the electricity racing through his chest under her healing hands, too.

“You don’t think I know that?” she says.

“Well, you’re certainly not acting like it!”

Katara brings her hands to her hips. “He’s my friend, too. But Misu and Rafa did nothing wrong!”

Sokka opens his mouth to protest, but Katara plows forward before he can speak. “We gave Zuko a chance, even after everything he did to us. Don’t these people deserve that, too?”

 _“I'll never forgive Yon Rha,”_ Katara had said, her head pressed into Zuko’s shoulder as she wrapped her arms around him. “ _But I am ready to forgive you.”_

“She’s right. I hurt all of you, and you still forgave me.” His voice is still raspy, and he nearly collapses when he tries to stand, leaning against the tree at his back to avoid toppling over.

He looks at Sokka, at the thinly veiled hurt in his boyfriend’s expression and the flesh on his bicep that his mind paints in violent shades of red. “ _You_ forgave me. That’s more than I could ever ask.”

Sokka swallows, and Zuko traces the bobbing of his Adam’s Apple.

_Whoosh!_

Zuko barely has time to look up before the pool erupts in a geyser of water, flinging Aang into the air and onto the shore with a pained _oof._

“I’m okay,” he says breathlessly, taking Katara’s hand and pulling himself to his feet.

The Mother of Faces emerges out of the pool behind him, waves swirling around her with a renewed, frantic vigor.

“You think I am _cruel?”_ she says, leaning forward so that she towers over Aang. “Since the beginning of time, I’ve fashioned faces with great care deliberation—with all my heart! In each face, I put a piece of my own being!”

The ghostly skin of the faces floating behind her contort into scowls, mouths open in silent screams.

“But then these—these _humans,_ they trample into my forest to make demands of me as if I were their servant!” The branches in her arms crackle as she drags a gnarled claw through the water, spraying everyone on the pool’s shore. “They dare ask me to replace my precious gifts with new ones! Do you know how it feels to be told by such insignificant beings that your work is _inadequate_?”

“Right, insignificant,” Sokka mutters bitterly as Aang scrambles to cover for the entirety of mankind.

“That’s not what they meant—“

“The humans are so pitiable and my kindness is so profound that I swallow my pride and grant their requests!” she continues, as though Aang hadn’t spoken at all. “Once a season, however, is all I can tolerate! I thought you, _Avatar,_ were supposed to be the best of the humans, yet you jump into one of my sacred pools and defile it with your presence! You scold me like I’m a child!”

Aang fidgets under what would be her gaze, if the inhuman creature had eyes. “Avatar or not, you humans are the same: selfish, shortsighted, and insolent! Now get out of my forest, and take your friends with you.”

 _“Get out!”_ the forest creatures chitter. _“Get out!”_

_Flames, trees, flesh, Sokka—all burning at his hands. “Shut up! Leave me the fuck alone!”_

The sun seems to disappear, bathing them all in a nightmarish purple light. Spider-snakes hiss and bare their fangs they slither down from the branches. A lion-vulture roars as it drops from a tree to snap at them alongside a pack of armadillo-bears.

 _“Get out!”_ they snarl. _“Get out!”_

Zuko stumbles to Sokka’s side, leaning on him for a moment before sliding into a bending stance. The flames he summons are meager, but they’ll have to be enough.

“Try not to hurt them!” Aang says, directing a gust of wind at a colony of flutter-bats diving towards him.

“Because they’re spirit animals,” Katara huffs as she blocks the gnashing teeth of two armadillo-bears with a water whip, “I know.”

The hit sends one of them staggering towards Misu and Rafa with a roar.

“No!” Zuko shouts, punching forward a blast of fire.

It’s weak, _too weak_ , and it’s only Katara’s quick maneuvering that stops the armadillo-bear in its tracks.

“Thank you, Katara!” Misu says, tugging Rafa away from the now-frozen animal.

Katara nods. “We waterbenders have to look out for each other.”

_“Get out! Get out! Get out!”_

“I think we should do what they say,” Aang says, glancing around nervously as the fauna’s chanting grows louder. “Let’s go!”

“Good plan!” Sokka says, grabbing Zuko’s non-flaming hand. “Goodbye, creepy valley!”

“No.” All heads turn to Misu, who looks between her brother and Aang. “Rafa and I aren’t leaving this forest until we have what we came for.”

“You can come back later!” Aang says. “I’ll help you get back. But there’s no way we can fight off an entire fores—hey, watch out!”

Aang bends a funnel of air at the flutter-bat in the process of dive-bombing Rafa, knocking his wooden mask off in the process.

“Holy shit,” Sokka whispers, clenching Zuko’s hand. “Holy shit.”

If Zuko could move a single muscle in his body, he’d be cursing right alongside him. But he’s frozen, his mind working in overdrive to process the sight before him: Rafa’s face is _gone._

There is no burning or scarring melting away his features ( _like the useless, warped shell of Zuko’s left ear or the waxen skin folded over his eye that was once attached to his brow-bone)._ There’s just... _nothing._

“No!” Misu cries frantically. “His mask! He needs his mask! Help me find it!”

Rafa doesn’t twitch, even as the wind whips his grey hair across his smooth, featureless skin.

“Wait,” Aang says, moving closer to Rafa, “I’ve seen something like this before...when I met Koh, the Face Stealer!”

Zuko, like most Fire Nation children, has heard the tales of Koh: a wicked spirit, spindly like a centipede and hard like a crab, waiting with his milky white mask to attack any children who can’t control their emotions. _Don’t show weakness,_ his teachers would say, _or Koh will steal away your face forever._

(Sometimes, during his first year at sea, Zuko would stare at himself in the mirror tucked in the back corner of his quarters. He’d let the fear and shame coiled inside of him escape onto his features, filled with a sickening hope that the Face Stealer would free him from his newly scarred reflection.)

(It never worked, so Zuko learned the merits of a permanent scowl.)

“Quiet.” The cacophony of the forest dies down at the spirit’s order. “Repeat what you said, Avatar.”

“Koh the Face Stealer,” Aang says. “He’s a spirit who looks kinda like a big ugly sow-bug with these big ugly legs and a bunch of big ugly faces. He’s—“

“He is my son.”

“Koh the Face Stealer is your _son?”_ Aang gasps.

“That is not the name I gave him, but yes.”

Aang blushes, shifting his weight nervously. “Oh, heh heh. Did I say ugly? I meant, uh…”

Zuko thinks, not for the first time, that the secondhand embarrassment that Aang constantly inspires will be the death of him.

“He’s been estranged from me since time began,” the Mother of Faces says. “The legends say that he misses me so much that he’s spent all of history stealing faces. How do you know him, Avatar?”

“We’ve met,” Aang explains. “And to tell you the truth, your son isn’t the nicest of Spirits. He took someone important away from one of my past lives...and yet my past life spared him.”

The Mother of Faces doesn’t move for a moment; then, slowly, she reaches a hand out and wraps it around Rafa’s head. 

“I can feel his handiwork here,” she says, her arm beginning to glow a brilliant gold. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.”

“What’s going on?” Misu asks. “Is she hurting him?”

The light brightens into a blinding white, dimming only when the spirit retracts her hand, now returning in color to its original brown.

“Hey, sis.”

Misu gasps, hurrying to her brother’s side. “Rafa!”

She throws her arms around him, laughing; when she pulls back, a love-filled (and no longer featureless) face smiles back at her.

“Thank you, Mother of Faces,” Aang says, bowing. “I know we humans can be aggravating; so often, we’re ungrateful for what we’ve been given.”

 _Am I ungrateful,_ Zuko wonders, _for blaming my mother for finding happiness?_

“Goodbye, Avatar,” the spirit says.

This time, when she disappears into the depths of the pool, no one tries to stop her. The faces left in her wake ripple in the small waves created by her exit, bobbing once, twice, before they, too, sink beneath the surface. 

As the water grows still, Zuko can’t help but feel like a part of him was dragged down with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fair warning, classes are starting up again so updates may be slightly less frequent


	15. son of ursa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re out of the forest, now, each of Zuko’s uncoordinated steps taking him further from that godforsaken valley. He almost wants to turn back and beg the Mother of Faces to erase his mind, too. (Agni, what a fucking hypocrite.)
> 
> or: finally, a healthy dose of true hurt/comfort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took a while, i had some trouble deciding how exactly i wanted the rest of this story to play out. i also posted some other parts of this series in the meantime, so go check those out!
> 
> warnings for alcohol and references to abuse

If not for the grounding presence of Sokka’s hand intertwined with his, Zuko probably would have floated somewhere far, far away by now. 

(It would be nice, wouldn’t it, to get another break from this withering body?)

“Come on,” Sokka says, gently tugging him forward.

They’re out of the forest, now, each of Zuko’s uncoordinated steps taking him further from that godforsaken valley. He almost wants to turn back and beg the Mother of Faces to erase his mind, too. (Agni, what a fucking hypocrite.)

They arrive at the campsite a few minutes later, their bedrolls still strewn about from the night before.

“I don’t think I can stay here,” Zuko admits, staring warily at the ashes of the fire Roku had sent flying in his face.

“Yeah,” Sokka says. “Me neither.”

“Do you...could we maybe stay somewhere in the town?”

Sokka squeezes his hand. “Does this mean you’re done with the whole spy thing?”

“It wasn’t a _spy thing_ ,” Zuko retorts. “And besides, _someone_ already blew my cover yesterday.”

He aims a pointed glare at Aang, who hunches his shoulders sheepishly.

“Aha!” Sokka says. “So you _do_ admit you were undercover!”

“Sokka,” Katara chides, whacking her brother on the shoulder. “Give him a break. I’m sure he’s exhausted.”

She turns to look at Zuko, her expression softening. “Do you want to head back to the palace? I don’t think anyone would mind.”

The offer is tempting. Isn’t that what he’s wanted for days, now? The chance to leave Hira’a and its poisonous secrets in the dust?

“No,” he says eventually. “I think there’s still more for me to do here.”

 _“Son of Ursa”;_ that’s what the Mother of Faces had called him. Not Son of Ozai, nor Grandson of Azulon.

She called him the child of kindness and light, of love and nurturing that’s lingered in his fragile heart long after she vanished.

And now, with Sokka’s hand held tightly between his bruised knuckles, he is the son of hopeful embers finally reigniting.

(Or, given his luck, of flames about to flicker out for good.)

* * *

Sokka takes the new lack of secrecy to mean free reign of the Fire Lord’s bank account, which he heartily invests in two rooms at the town’s nicest inn.

His trademark money-spending grin fades when they pass through the threshold of his and Zuko’s quarters. _“_ _This_ is the nicest one in the whole place?”

Sokka’s indignation isn’t exactly unjustified; the room is about a third the size of even the palace’s smallest chambers and is decorated so sparsely that, if Zuko wasn’t intimately familiar with the Fire Nation’s penitentiary system, he might liken it to a cell.

Still, Zuko elbows him and turns to the agitated matradee with his practiced royal smile. “It’s lovely.”

“Thank you, My Lord,” she says, bowing. “Please let me know if I may be of service.”

Sokka interrupts her before she can take her leave. “Actually,” he says, shooting a sly glance at Zuko, “would you happen to know where we could get a bottle of baijiu?”

* * *

“This,” Zuko says, taking a swig of liquor, “is the best idea you’ve ever had.”

The alcohol is pleasant as it burns down his throat, numbing the stiffness of the bannister at his back and shielding him from the chill of the balcony’s breeze.

“I take some offense to that, you know,” Sokka says.

His words have no bite, and he grins as he takes the half-empty bottle from Zuko’s shaky hand.

When he brings the baijiu up to his lips, Zuko can’t look away. It’s almost obscene, really, the way Sokka closes his eyes and inadvertently shudders as he drinks.

Sokka must catch him staring, because he cracks an incredibly smug grin that leaves Zuko’s face flushing for reasons wholly unrelated to the fuzziness in his bloodstream.

Gently, Zuko guides the bottle out of Sokka’s hands, pulling it aside so that he can kiss along his neck. Sokka hums contentedly, running his fingers through Zuko’s hair.

It isn’t exactly a secret that Zuko is a little bit... _handsy_ when he’s drunk. His inebriated self also, much to the amusement of his friends, has a penchant for reenacting half-remembered dramatic monologues (and cursing the Ember Island Players as he does so).

Now, he’s too busy kissing every inch of Sokka’s exposed skin to talk, much less reenact a scene from _Love Amongst the Dragons._

Zuko stills, halfway in the process of climbing into Sokka’s lap.

_Love Amongst the Dragons. Noriko. Ursa._

_Mom._

Zuko sits back clumsily on his heels, the uncoordinated movement sending the baijiu teetering dangerously close to the edge of the balcony. He makes to grab for it, but only succeeds in pushing it the remainder of the way through the railing’s slats with his fumbling hands. The bottle tumbles over the side, careening downward into the darkness until Zuko hears, rather than sees, the explosion of glass as it shatters on impact.

The sight of his splayed fingers, still outstretched and _useless_ , fills him with an inexplicable rage. He clenches his fist as though it can somehow turn back time, can somehow return the fractured pieces to his grip.

He knows, with an odd sense of certainty, that the shards would remain jagged even if he managed to summon them back to him. They’d slice straight through his palms, only causing more pain the tighter he grasped them in some shoddy attempt to mend everything back together.

The phantom sting of alcohol in open wounds flashes across his hands like the flames he’s surely still too weak (and drunk) to summon, burning like the trail of embers that the liquor left down his throat. His eyes burn, too, a wet fire roaming across his pupils and down his cheeks like the blaze that once razed there.

He jolts at the feeling of a hand on his back, and it’s stupid, _so fucking stupid,_ because he’s supposed to be a horny, theater-nerd drunk, making out with his boyfriend and drawing soliloquoys from the far corners of his brain. He’s not supposed to be doing whatever the hell it is he’s doing now—breaking down, losing control, losing _himself._

“It’s not fair,” he says, voice barely above a whisper.

Sokka makes a questioning noise, and when he gently guides Zuko towards his chest, he nearly collapses onto him.

“It’s not fair,” he repeats.

He knows he sounds like a petulant child, like the spoiled brat his mother clearly wanted nothing more than to get away from, but he can’t find it in himself to care.

“It’s not- it’s not _fair!”_

He’s mad, now, any delusional hope of reconciliation once again dead and gone. But at least anger is familiar; at least anger isn’t ( _weak or pathetic or dishonorable)_ a lie. He grits his teeth as the feeling threatens to overwhelm him, bunching the back of Sokka’s shirt up in his fists and clinging for dear life.

“It’s not fair.” It’s a mantra, a prayer; it’s the only thought his addled brain can even vaguely latch onto. “It’s not fair.”

“I know,” Sokka replies each time. “I know.”

Zuko presses his forehead into Sokka’s shoulder, smothering his words into his chest and muffling his sobs.

_It’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair._

“Do you think,” he asks after a moment, “that she even cared?”

He pulls his head back from Sokka’s shirt, cringing in shame at the obvious tear stains on it.

“Of course she did,” Sokka says.

“But she- she called Azula a monster when she was only eight! She was just a child! What kind of mother does that?”

 _Only eight_ , with smooth black hair that she sometimes let Zuko braid and a smile filled with more than just malice; _only eight_ , just like Kiyi is now.

“Fuck,” he curses, shakily pinching the bridge of his nose at the onslaught of thoughts suddenly bursting behind his skull.

“What’s wrong?”

“Kiyi,” he says, barely daring to breathe. “If Noriko is my mother, then makes her...”

“Your sister,” Sokka finishes for him.

“You don’t think…” Zuko starts, lowering his hand from his eyes to meet Sokka’s concerned gaze. “Sokka, what if she’s saying those awful things to her, too?”

Sokka sighs. “People change,” he says carefully. “You did.”

Zuko blushes a little at that, but quickly banishes any mushy feelings from his being as his thoughts return to _mothers and daughters and sisters._

“But my father didn’t,” he argues. “He’s been trying to kill me since the second I was born.”

“Yeah, and that’s why we put him in prison.”

“That doesn’t change the shit he got away with!” he snaps.

“No,” Sokka says gently, “it doesn’t.”

Zuko sighs, exhaling a cloud of smoke and trying to wrestle his racing heartbeat under control.

 _What would Ursa have done,_ he wonders, _if she’d been there the day of that Agni Kai?_

_(What if she’d never stopped Ozai from carrying out Azulon’s orders?)_

“I need to talk to him.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Sokka says slowly. “Remember what happened the last time you saw your dad?”

_A wanton face, cold and ruthless as ever; a sneer that made Zuko feel like a child again; “worthless, traitor, weakling, heretic—“_

“I meant Ikem,” he says, clenching his eyes shut for a moment to dispel the image of Ozai, leering in his cell, powerless yet still holding Zuko’s fear in the palms of his hands. “My mother’s...lover.”

It’s odd, trying to align his mother’s relationship with Ikem with that of hers with his father. He’d been taught from a young age that spouses were simply a matter of status, of pragmatic childbearing to continue one’s bloodline. He’d thought it was normal, the way his parents slept in separate rooms and hardly spoke outside of meals.

(Now, he thinks of Sela and Gonsu, their kind offering of a hot meal and a place to rest, their adoration for both their children and one another.

He hadn’t understood, then, what unconditional love meant, romantic or otherwise. He hadn’t realized that his uncle had been offering it to him all along.)

The other night, surrounded by her (new) family and the man she didn’t even recognize as her son, Ursa had seemed happy. It could have been a farce, though; if he couldn’t identify what was obviously her misery throughout his childhood, how the hell could he tell what her joy looked like now—not to mention on a face he‘d never even seen before?

“You think Ikem is Noren?” Sokka asks.

Zuko shrugs. “It makes sense. They said she went to that Agni-forsaken valley to find him.”

_And forget about her children._

“And Azula said she had a lover, remember?”

“Oh, right,” Sokka says sarcastically. “Because she’s _so_ trustworthy.”

The flippancy grates on Zuko, tensing the muscles in his jaw and narrowing his eyes into a glare.

“Don’t you get it?” he hisses. “She’s the only family I have left!”

She’s the only family he has left, because even powerless and imprisoned, Ozai would still keel over before considering Zuko as anything other than the dirt beneath his feet, and his mother skipped off into the sunset to start anew when he needed her most, and Lu Ten is no more than ashes sprinkled across the desert outside of Ba Sing Se, and—

“That’s not true.”

What the fuck did Sokka mean, _that’s not true?_

“You have your uncle.”

Zuko shakes his head. “That doesn’t count. He wasn’t around until after I was…” ( _blinded, branded, banished)_ “...away from home.”

“You also have us.”

Thoughts of flames and marble tiles and turtle-ducks vacate his mind in a rush. “What?”

“Y’know,” Sokka says, beginning to count each name on his fingers as he lists them, “Aang, Toph, Suki, my sister.

“Oh,” he adds, “and me, in case you forgot.”

He’s smiling, but Zuko can see a thinly veiled pain behind it.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “Of course you’re my family, and I love y— _all of you_ so much.”

Spirits, he did _not_ almost say that. No way. And if Sokka heard hints of words that one-hundred percent did not come out of his mouth, he prays that Agni is merciful and smites him where he’s still sitting, like an idiot, in Sokka’s lap.

“I should go to bed,” he stammers. “It’s, uh, late, and we’re, you know, not sober, and—“

Sokka cuts him off with a kiss. “Okay,” he says, a glint in his eyes that Zuko frankly does not have the emotional capacity to untangle at this time.

He waits for Zuko to scoot off of him before pulling them both up to stand on shaky legs.

“Fuck,” Sokka groans, blindly reaching for the railing as he sways. “Whose idea was it to drink so much?”

“Yours,” Zuko says, smiling as though his vertigo isn’t seconds away from knocking him on his ass. “We talked about this earlier, remember?”

“You’re mean,” Sokka grumbles as he grabs Zuko’s hand and begins tugging him back inside towards the bed. “Fire Lord Jerkface.”

“Fire Lord Jerkface bought you this room,” he counters.

Even though he’d steamed himself dry earlier, his clothes still cling to his skin and simply flake off in bits of dirt and leaves whenever he tries to strip.

“Sokka,” he says, turning to his now half-undressed boyfriend. “Get this off of me.”

“Listen, I know all of us call you the horny drunk, but—“

“For Agni’s sake, do I _look_ like I want to have sex?” His eyes widen at the _duh_ expression on Sokka’s face. “Do _not_ answer that. I’m just tired, and I—wait, what do you mean _all of us?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is...not exactly how i wanted it to go, but i rly just needed to write this out to bridge to the actual plot coming up next


	16. a cup of oolong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko wakes up tired, hungry, and nursing one hell of a hangover.
> 
> or: zuko drinks bad tea and has some important (but equally awful) conversations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for allusions to abuse

Zuko wakes up tired, hungry, and nursing one hell of a hangover. He groans and scrubs his hand over his eyes, willing away the headache building steadily in his skull. The first of Agni’s rays peek through the room’s half-covered window, bathing the walls in warm swaths of yellow tinged with iridescent rainbows. The colors pop as he blinks, harsh spots of black superimposing themselves after each sluggish opening of his eyes. He has half a mind to burrow into Sokka’s side and try to return to sleep, a notion that only grows more absurd as his stomach begins to growl.

 _Fine,_ he thinks to himself, glowering at the room’s tattered curtains as though they alone bear the weight of his biological clock. His feet feel numb, and the wooden floor shrieks like a banshee the instant he puts any weight on it. Sokka, thankfully, sleeps like the dead, and doesn’t so much as stir when Zuko quietly dresses on unsteady legs.

His clothes from the day _(days?)_ prior are sullied beyond repair, caked so deeply with dirt and swamp muck that it’s impossible to tell where the stains end and the fabric begins. Beside them, a small bag from Appa’s saddle sits half-open; they’d taken it the night prior after leaving the bison in a nearby pasture to be waited on by the Avatar’s numerous doting fans.

Rumpled tunics spill over the side of the pouch, and a few small bottles of liquor rattle around beneath them as Zuko searches for any semblance of acceptable attire. The pickings are frustratingly slim, but if he wears Sokka’s semi-hooded cloak and keeps his hair combed low over his eyes, he can hopefully stay under the radar. (The garment is, as he’s told his boyfriend numerous times, an incredibly stupid fad; seriously, who needs a jacket with a hood but no sleeves?)

(“ _You’re a stupid fad,”_ Sokka replied each time without fail.)

The fabric is navy blue rather than his traditional black, but Zuko supposes that beggars can’t be choosers. He gives himself a once-over in the mirror, running his hand over the silk covering his chest and slowly pulling the hood over his head. The scar still peeks out, red and angry, but it’s better than nothing.

Zuko looks back at Sokka, the easy rise and fall of his chest, the smooth planes of his face evened out in sleep, and can’t stop himself from darting over to kiss his forehead.

He scurries away before Sokka has a chance to stir.

* * *

The innkeeper recommends a tea house down the road, and since he’s too desperate for caffeine to even ask about specialty blends, Zuko finds himself at a small counter sipping the weakest cup of oolong known to man.

The server, a bored-looking, middle-aged woman in dark spectacles, doesn’t so much as bat an eye at her sole customer once she serves him. Zuko doesn’t take it personally; he happens to know from experience how overwhelming the morning rush can be (and, considering the quality of Uncle’s tea, the lunchtime, afternoon, and evening rushes as well), and the importance of the few moments of peace and quiet just after opening because of it.

Unfortunately, Zuko also happens to be a hypocrite, so, though it physically pains him to do so, he finds himself interrupting her solitude.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he says, cringing at the rasp of his voice.

The woman just stares at him, seemingly bothered by his existence. Her _aura_ , as Ty Lee would say, is unsettlingly reminiscent of Mai’s (though Mai would sooner impale herself on her own knife than work in customer service).

“Is there something wrong with your tea?”

Though Uncle would surely be impressed by Zuko’s litany of complaints about his beverage, he’d like to think he’d be even prouder of the way he manages to hold his tongue.

“No,” he says, trying for a smile.

If the woman catches his lie, she doesn’t seem to care enough to comment on it.

“Are you from around here?”

“What’s it to you?”

Zuko bites back a groan. “I have a...relative who used to live here. Her name was Ursa.”

( _Emphasis on “was”,_ he thinks bitterly.)

“Ah,” the woman says. “Jinzuk and Rina’s girl.”

“Er, yes,” Zuko says, staring down at his tea as though it will absolve him of his awkwardness (and the odd weight of the fact that he’s never heard his grandparents’ names before).

“I heard she was quite a beauty.” ( _You don’t know the half of it.)_ “Must be why Ozai snatched her up.”

Zuko gulps at the mention of his father, forcing back thoughts of flames and callous yellow eyes. “So you never saw her?”

The woman snorts, her features softening momentarily from their caustic neutrality. “Honey, I’ve never seen anyone in my life.”

She tilts her head downward so that her glasses slide past the bridge of her nose, revealing two pale, milky eyes.

“You’re blind.”

The woman raises a brow. “You got a problem with that?”

“No, uh, of course not!” Zuko stammers. “I actually have- one of my best friends is blind, and she’s the greatest earthbender in the world!”

The woman just chuckles as she pushes her spectacles back up to their rightful place, and Zuko goes to hide his blush behind another sip of tea before he realizes the futility of the motion; if his server can’t see, she can’t possibly call him out for his embarrassing flush.

...If his server can’t see, she may not know the identity of her chatty customer.

“Ma’am,” he says, awkwardly clearing his throat. “Do you know who—“

_“Mom!”_

His stilted attempt at transparency is thwarted by the appearance of a frazzled-looking teenager bursting out of the back room. If Zuko had to guess, he’d say the boy is about the same age he was when he worked at the Jasmine Dragon. (He’d also guess that he and his mother live above the shop, a thought that fills him with an achy nostalgia.)

“Kei Lo,” the woman says with a sigh. “How many times have we talked about running in the store?”

“Sorry,” the boy says sheepishly, sliding a hand through a shaggy mop of hair as he skids to a stop at his mother’s side. “It’s just, Tuli invited me to go see _Love Amongst the Dragons,_ and I need some money for…”

He trails off, eyes widening as he recognizes just who, exactly, the patron at the counter is. His wits return to him quickly, shock morphing into something strangely akin to anger.

“What’s _he_ doing here?”

Zuko forces himself not to react to the boy’s disdain.

“He’s our patron,” the woman replies shortly. “So show him some respect.”

It takes an exhaustingly monumental effort to suppress his instinctual shudder at her words.

The boy scowls. “Do you even know who he is?”

Zuko is already scrounging for the money in his pocket, an apology ready on his lips, when the woman answers.

“Of course,” she says. “And I am honored to be in the Fire Lord’s presence.”

She punctuates her statement with a short dip of her head, then returns to staring at her son (or, at least, what Zuko presumes the blind equivalent of staring to be).

Kei Lo groans. “I can’t believe you.”

On that lovely note, he stomps out of the shop, the bell over the door jingling furiously as it slams closed behind him.

The woman frowns. “I apologize for his behavior.”

“It’s alright,” Zuko says, his voice suddenly incredibly hoarse.

“Kei Lo is just...misguided.”

Zuko takes another sip of tea, unsure of how to respond (or if he should do so at all).

“His brother died in the war,” she explains. “He‘s been on this misguided quest for vengeance ever since.”

“Oh. I’m sorry for your loss.”

The woman shakes her head. “You brought our troops home. If you hadn’t...I fear I may have lost my other son, too.”

Zuko bows his head. “Still, I apologize for the suffering my forefathers have caused.”

“Thank you,” the woman says, pressing her hands together into the symbol of the flame. “May your flame burn eternal.”

Zuko mirrors her, fist slightly shaking where it’s nestled against his palm. “May yours as well.”

* * *

Sokka finds him a few hours later on the awning of a building overlooking the main square.

“I thought I’d find you up here,” he says, taking a seat beside him.

“Really? Because all the scrapes on your hands say otherwise.”

“Okay,” Sokka admits, face heating in indignation, “I _may_ have had to climb onto a few other buildings before this.”

 _“But,”_ he adds at Zuko’s snort of amusement, “at least I knew you’d be out angsting on a roof _somewhere!”_

Zuko doesn’t validate him with a reply.

“It’s nice out here,” Sokka says, sighing and kicking his legs over the edge. “Way too hot, but still.”

“To be fair, we _are_ in the Fire Nation,” Zuko replies, the familiar bickering surprisingly comforting.

Sokka chuckles. “You should’ve seen my sister this morning. She looked like an angry gopher-bear.”

Zuko smirks at the mental image of it; he’s witnessed firsthand the havoc humidity wreaks on Katata’s hair.

“How are they?” he asks. “Aang and Katara, I mean.”

“They’re fine. Disgustingly oogie-ish, but fine. They’re probably out saving children right now or something.”

Sokka pauses to shudder, either at the thought of his sister’s PDA or her constant need to act as some sort of guardian angel (or, more likely, both).

“But what about you? Not gonna lie, when I woke up alone, I _kinda_ felt like we had a one night stand.”

“Sorry,” Zuko mutters. “I meant to leave a note.”

“At least I’m not the one who did the walk of shame.”

“It wasn’t a walk of shame!” Zuko splutters. “I just went to get some tea.”

Sokka sighs dramatically. “That’s what they all say.”

“Agni, you’re insufferable.”

“Come on,” Sokka says, nudging Zuko with his elbow. “At least tell me what you’re out here brooding about.”

“I’m not brooding about anything!” Zuko snaps, triggering another bout of laughter from Sokka. “I’m just… thinking.”

“Uh huh,” Sokka says cheekily.

“I just,” Zuko says, looking up at the sky for strength, “I know I have to talk to Ikem, but—“

“You don’t _have_ to do anything,” Sokka interjects; he acquiesces when Zuko fixes him with a glare. “Right, sorry, shutting up now.”

Zuko groans. “What am I supposed to say to him? ‘Hi, I went to that creepy forest you mentioned and found out your wife is actually my mom’?”

“Better than ‘hello, Zuko here’,” Sokka snickers.

Zuko lets his head fall into his hands. “This is hopeless.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll have me there to do the talking, remember?”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Sokka clutches his hand to his chest with a gasp. “You wound me.”

Zuko just rolls his eyes, letting his eyes wander from his boyfriend to the steadily growing crowd in the plaza below.

“What’s going on down there?” Sokka asks, holding up a hand to keep out the sun and squinting at the ground.

“There may be a, uh, matinee performance of _Love Amongst the Dragons_.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“We missed the beginning the other day. It’s important!” he says, his voice one hundred-percent _not_ cracking.

Sokka sighs and settles in against Zuko’s side. “If I watch this, you owe me food later.”

“Fine,” Zuko says, too distracted by the slowly retracting curtains to mask his eagerness. “But no fire flakes.”

_“Seriously?”_

* * *

“So wait, why did the Water Spirit disguise herself again?”

“Spirits, Sokka, we’ve been at this for _hours_.”

Though Zuko rolls his eyes, there’s a smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he drags Sokka towards the outskirts of the town.

“All I’m saying is that a good play wouldn’t be so confusing!”

Zuko pointedly does _not_ take satisfaction in Sokka’s yelp as he lets a little extra heat rise to the surface of their interlocked hands.

“Hey, no firebending allowed!”

“Says who?”

“Says..” Sokka starts, mouth opening and closing a few times before he settles on an answer. “Says the jerkbending authorities!”

“I thought _I_ was the jerkbending authority.”

“No, you’re just a jerk!”

Zuko can’t help the snicker that bubbles out of him. Sokka joins him moments later, squeezing Zuko’s hand as their laughter rings out past the chittering of squirrel-toads in the reeds of the pastures around them.

It’s getting darker, now, and Zuko summons a small flame in his free hand to illuminate the path. Every so often, he steps on footprints that he eerily recognizes as his own. When he left these tracks, just days ago, his strides had been those of a man kindly accepting the hospitality of strangers. Now, they’re those of a man visiting a ghost—of a son inching towards his execution.

The lights are on when Zuko and Sokka arrive, a strange beacon in the darkness that draws Zuko in unwittingly, the morbid flit toward death of a moth-wasp lured to a flame.

Sokka squeezes his hand. “You’ve got this.”

Zuko nods and takes a steadying breath, trying to draw any sort of strength from the comforting touch. Then he curls his hand into a fist, extinguishes the fire, and knocks.

He hardly dares to breathe at the sound of shuffling inside, his hand falling mechanically to his side. It clenches as the door creaks open to reveal Noren— _Ikem_ —peering at him with a curious expression.

Zuko swallows. “I know it’s late, but I—“

“I had a feeling you’d return.” His voice is flat, face unsettlingly void of expression.

“What do you mean?” Sokka asks, leaning over Zuko’s shoulder.

Ikem doesn’t get a chance to answer; a whirlwind of pink blurs past him, barreling into Zuko and wrapping her tiny arms around his waist.

“You came back!” Kiyi cries, squeezing him tightly. “You came back because we’re best friends!”

Sokka chuckles as he steadies Zuko, heroically keeping him from keeling over at the hands of a hyperactive eight-year-old.

“It’s good to see you again,” Zuko says with a smile.

Kiyi grins, and her expression only brightens when she spots Sokka.

“Socko!” she exclaims, releasing Zuko in favor of aggressively hugging her new target.

“Socko,” Zuko parrots with a smirk.

Sokka just glares. “I hate you,” he mouths.

Kiyi shifts so that one of her tiny arms is linked with Sokka’s, yanking him forward. “Come have dinner with us!”

Ikem, whose apathy had morphed into fondness at his daughter’s antics, twists his face back into a grimace. “I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”

“Nonsense! Please, come join us!”

Zuko’s head jerks towards Noriko (Ursa) ( _Mom)_ , who’s seated at the table. He’d thought he was ready to face her, to face _this,_ but…

(But his throat is dry as the desert and his lungs are too small and his hands are clammy and Agni, he can’t fucking _do this_.)

He doesn’t have a choice, though, because Kiyi cheers, and Sokka nudges him forwards with a gentle push between his shoulders, and as much as he wants to deny it, it’s far too late to run.

Every fiber of his being screams that this is a mistake, that he should have hightailed it back to the palace when he had the chance, but he can’t, he _can’t,_ so he just has to sit there, pushing around the rice on his plate and praying he doesn’t hurl.

“You haven’t touched your food yet. Is something wrong?”

Zuko startles under his mother’s gaze. Her eyes are those of a stranger: brown rather than gold, unpainted rather than adorned with royal make-up. Most strikingly, though, her eyes are unguarded, filled with an open, genuine concern untinged with the fear and hardness that he remembered from his childhood.

“Do you do this every night?”

“What, eat dinner?” Kiyi replies. “Doesn’t everybody eat dinner every night?”

Zuko shakes his head. “No, I meant eat dinner together. Like this.”

“Of course,” his mother says. “That’s why we’re eating so late. I insisted we wait until Noren came home.”

“I appreciate that, dear. Rehearsal ran over.”

He tries to imagine his own parents conversing like this, sharing glances of love rather than coldness and apathy. He tries to imagine family dinners free of yelling, ones not overshadowed by the fear of what may come afterwards if he so much as looks at his father the wrong way.

(He tries to imagine sitting around a table night after night at which he hadn’t been told he was lucky to be born.)

“So,” Ikem says once the silence has dragged on just a bit too long. “What brings you and the ambassador back this way? Looking for more details on the Hira’a Acting Troupe?”

Though his words may be joking, the undercurrent of suspicion—of a warning to _leave_ —is clear as day.

He feels Sokka shift in his seat beside him, and puts a gentle hand on his leg to keep him from saying whatever impulsive retort is on the tip of his tongue. 

“Actually,” Zuko says coolly. “The ambassador’s name is Sokka, and he’s my boyfriend.”

The admission leaves his heart pounding, because _this is the Fire Nation, idiot,_ but isn’t met with disdain. (He might prefer it to the pride in his mother’s smile; the pride for a son whom she doesn’t know is her own, for a child who led his family into ruin.)

“Tell me, Noriko,” he says, trying to keep his tone from warbling. “Are you happy?”

“Hmm,” she replies thoughtfully. “What an odd thing to ask.”

 _Odd,_ as though the ten years of life he shared with her had been filled with anything other than misery.

“Just answer me, please.”

She must sense his desperation, because her confusion softens. “Yes, of course,” she says. “I’m where I belong.”

The childish part of him, the part that still aches from the loss and betrayal and _hurt_ of his mother’s abandonment, is vengeful, because how could she belong somewhere that Zuko is not?

But the rest of him—the prince who rose from the ashes to end his great-grandfather’s war; the leader who saved his peoples’ sons from slaughter on the front lines—understands that the price of freedom is never too high.

Zuko bows his head. “Thank you. I’ve bothered you folks enough.”

He takes Sokka’s hand and begins to pull him to his feet. “Have a good evening.”

“No,” Ikem says, stopping them in their tracks.

Zuko looks back at him in confusion, frowning at the conflicted anguish on his face.

“Noriko, I knew this moment would come sooner or later.”

“What’s going on?” she asks, allowing her husband to clasp her palms in his.

Ikem sighs and turns once again to Zuko. “Go ahead, young man,” he says. “Do what you came to do. Tell her you haven’t forgotten who you are.”

Zuko’s heart stutters inside his chest. Ikem _knows_. He knows that Zuko’s learned the truth, and he knows his wife’s true identity despite her not even knowing herself.

The knowledge is too much, nearly as suffocating as the fact that he wants Zuko to tell her. He’s giving Zuko his blessing to ruin the life they built, and Zuko...Zuko wants so badly to do it. He wants to be seen, _truly_ seen, by the one person who’d given him nothing but adoration from the start. He wants to know the tenderness of his mother, the feeling of her arms around him that he’s nearly forgotten in the eight years of her absence. He wants her to see how he’s suffered, and how he’s overcome.

He wants, more than he’s wanted from anyone—even _Father_ —for her to be proud of him.

“My name is Zuko,” he says shakily. “I am Lord of the Fire Nation, and I...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we’re nearing the end, folks
> 
> while i’ve loved writing this, i’m working on the next installment in this series (that will pick up where this story leaves off) and i’m really excited to share it with you all


	17. unbreakable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three simple words—that’s all it would take. Three tiny words, and the truth would be set free.
> 
> or: a decision is made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for discussion of abuse

Three simple words—that’s all it would take. Three tiny words, and the truth would be set free: “I am Lord of the Fire Nation, and I _am your son.”_

Only three little words, just like the phrase he’s beyond terrified of saying to Sokka. The same number of frightening syllables, a meager semblance of a phrase that somehow holds unimaginable power.

Do the others know the weight of these words? Do they know that, perched on the tip of his tongue, is the ignition with the potential to both spark a new beginning and incinerate everything around him?

 _Father would be impressed,_ he thinks wryly—for once, he’s thinking before he speaks.

His eyes dart around the table, from Ikem’s resigned acceptance to Kiyi’s innocent curiosity, before landing on his mother, whose lips are downturned in concern.

His mother, whose true face he will never again see in the flesh. His mother, who taught him kindness and poetry and the best technique for feeding turtle-ducks in a palace that bred only hatred. 

His mother, who left and sacrificed everything—who _committed treason_ —in order to save his life.

Her hand is still interlocked with Ikem’s, just as Sokka’s is with his. He squeezes it, and Sokka squeezes back; and if Zuko was able to tear his gaze away from the family in front of him, he’s sure Sokka would be looking at him with a similar fondness.

It’s strange, the sympathy and love radiating from the table’s occupants. He knows, somehow, beyond a shadow of a doubt that Kiyi’s parents would risk everything for her. (Because isn’t that exactly what his mother did for him, all those years ago?) And while he may not have known much of such love in his own early childhood...it isn’t unfamiliar.

It’s the warmth of Uncle’s forgiveness, and the tenderness of Katara’s hugs. It’s the brightness of Aang’s laugh when he takes pity on Zuko’s horrible jokes, and the grunt of affection that comes with Toph’s friendly punches.

It’s the way Sokka sees him, _all_ of him, and in return offers nothing but joy and acceptance and... _love._

He realizes, then, that the right words to say are actually only two:

“I am Lord of the Fire Nation, and I _forgive you.”_

Ikem’s eyes widen, and his mother frowns as she pulls Kiyi into her lap “I don’t understand.”

Her hands comb nervously through her daughter’s hair. (Zuko remembers the tender way those same fingers removed the spokes of his small crown each time it got tangled.)

“Let’s just say we knew each other in a different life.” He winks at Kiyi as he says it—at least, he tries to, to the extent it’s possible with his non-deformed eye—and when she giggles, the pang it sends through his chest is one of joy rather than hurt.

“You have a beautiful family,” he says, dipping into a small bow. “Please cherish it.”

Though her brow is still crinkled in confusion, Noriko smiles.

Because she _is_ Noriko, now. She is Kiyi’s mother, and the keystone of a childhood that has not yet been lost—that won't be lost for a long time, if Zuko has anything to do with it. She is free of the pain Ozai caused her, and is that not his goal as Fire Lord? To undo the years of his family’s cruelty?

(He may still be working on his own personal recovery from it, but by Agni he’s getting there, day by day.)

“Thank you again for your hospitality,” he says, letting Kiyi give him one last crushing hug before stepping outside.

The air that meets him is chilly, but Sokka’s body is wonderfully warm when he pulls Zuko in for a kiss.

“Tell me,” he says, pressing their foreheads together when they break apart. “Was that what you really wanted to tell her?”

“Yeah,” Zuko says. “I think- I think it was.”

Sokka grins. “Then I’m proud of you.”

He leans in to kiss him again, but stops when Ikem bursts out the door behind them. He clutches a small platter in his hands, his grip visibly tightening as he awkwardly clears his throat.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he says nervously. “I just thought you might like some loco moco for the trip back.”

“Mmm,” Sokka sighs, practically salivating as he makes grabby hands. “Gimme.”

“Thank you, Ikem,” Zuko says.

The man nearly drops the plate at the moniker; the food is just barely saved by Sokka’s quick cradling of it against his chest.

“Ah,” Ikem replies once he composes himself. “I see you know my name. I presume you spoke to the Mother of Faces, then?”

Zuko nods. “We did.”

“And she was terrifying!” Sokka adds.

Ikem chuckles, his tense posture loosening. “Yes, I suppose she is. You know, she gave me a new face as well, years ago.”

“Why?” Sokka blurts out.

Zuko wants to elbow him, but Ikem doesn’t seem bothered.

“After Ursa left, I wasn’t myself. People would lie and say things would be fine, and others would just...stare. It was like a part of me died.”

“I know what you mean,” Zuko mutters, staring down at his feet.

“She didn’t want to leave you and your sister, you know.” Zuko looks up, suddenly pinned under the intensity of Ikem’s conviction. “She cared so much for you. She used to say it was _torture,_ not knowing if you were okay.

“I told her we could sneak you out and all live here together,” he continues, a sad smile playing at his lips, “but she said…”

“My father would never allow it,” Zuko finishes, swallowing thickly.

“He caused her so much pain,” Ikem sighs. “I hate him for what he did.”

Zuko chuckles, the sound hollow and humorless, and gestures upwards with his left shoulder. “Yeah, I know the feeling.”

Ikem presses his lips into a thin line as his eyes trace the ridges of his scar. 

“She cried when she heard,” he says carefully. “She didn’t know if it was true, but she said...she said any parent even capable of imagining such cruelty should suffer Agni’s wrath.”

Zuko nearly chokes on the impossibly large lump lodged in his throat.

“Did she know?” he whispers. “When it happened...did she know I was her son?”

His voice cracks at the end, fragmenting like the dread pooling in his stomach.

Ikem’s voice is equally soft when he replies: “No.”

Zuko lets his eyes slip closed, willing back the tears threatening to escape. Is he relieved? Upset? Vindicated?

“Good,” he finally settles on. “It’s- it’s better that way.”

When Ikem clasps him on the arm, the motion imbued with what Zuko’s best estimate of actual fatherliness is, he does not flinch.

“You are a great man, Lord Zuko,” Ikem says. “Ursa would be proud.”

“Thank you,” he replies hoarsely. “Take care of her and my sister for me.”

“Of course,” Ikem says. “You are always welcome at our table.”

“Believe me,” Sokka replies, still hugging the platter like a newborn. “We‘ll be there.”

Zuko snorts and links his elbow with Sokka’s.

“Come on,” he says, beginning to gently tug at Sokka. “Let’s go home.”

As they walk back towards town—towards their friends, their _family_ (and, more importantly, a certain flying bison)—arm in arm, Zuko’s heart feels lighter than it has in a long time.

Behind them, Ikem bows and makes the mark of the flame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i spent a long time debating how i wanted this chapter to go, and ultimately decided to diverge from the comics (as i have with many other parts). ik some people may disagree but i think that bc of all the different factors (like azula not being there & him not going to hira’a for the sake of looking for his mom) it just felt right.
> 
> feel free to drop your thoughts in the comments tho, i love reading them!


	18. epilogue: three months later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the responses to the last chapter seriously blew me away, so i thought i’d upload this sooner. enjoy!

“Only with your glory hidden in false form could you finally recognize my devotion.”

Kei Lo mouths the words along with the actor on stage. He knows this part like the back of his hand; the kiss, the bow, the cacophony of applause.

He’s watched _Love Amongst the Dragons_ so many times that he dreams in its monologues, knows the play so intimately that he sees the twisted smiles of kabuki masks each time he closes his eyes.

 _“Isn’t it great?”_ his brother used to say, balancing Kei Lo’s tiny body on his shoulders.

He would nod each time, his fists tugging at Shiyu’s hair as he leaned forward, eager for a better view of the performance. (Even at just fifteen, his brother never once complained.)

 _“Some day, I’m gonna be like the Dragon Emperor,”_ he’d whisper as the actor paced the stage.

Shiyu had given him a mask of his own that year, a gorgeous blend of red and gold paint that shimmered in the sunlight. He’d helped Kei Lo put it on, just as their mother had helped Shiyu fit his Navy-issued helmet over his head.

 _“See?”_ he’d said, grinning behind the upturned faceplate. _“Now you can show your honor like me.”_

It was too big for Kei Lo’s baby face, but his brother had insisted he’d grow into it.

 _“Just you wait,”_ he’d told him, wiping away the tears clinging stubbornly to his cheeks as the mask clattered to the ground for the umpteenth time. _“By the time I get back, it’ll be the perfect size. You’ll give the Dragon Emperor a run for his money!”_

Kei Lo had laughed, and tried on the mask each morning under Agni’s light as he prayed for his nation’s prosperity.

But his god did not listen; by the time the mask finally fit, his brother had already met his cold, watery grave.

The people of Hira’a called him a war hero, a soldier who fought valiantly against the enemies of progress. They stood in this very plaza and wept for a soul taken too soon, praying that the Fire Lord would end the war with a swift victory.

Now, the townsfolk—the people whom Kei Lo once thought were his brethren in arms—gather here and cheer for a fictional promise of happily ever after. It’s no matter, though; even if they’ve fallen prey to the vicious propaganda of the royal imposter, Kei Lo swore to himself that his brother’s death would not be in vain.

Tonight, the sky bleeds in shades of pink and purple as the moon prepares to take its place in the sky, the last day of spring finally drawing to a close. The final glints of Agni, now sinking low in the horizon, cast the emptying plaza in a kaleidoscope of shadows.

Kei Lo keeps himself obscured in these swaths of darkness as he darts through the square, pausing behind pillars every so often to ensure he isn’t being followed. He only has one shot at this, and he can’t afford to mess it up.

He slips his Dragon Emperor mask over his face as he zig-zags through the alleys towards the dock, his small rucksack bouncing against his back. He shifts it higher on his shoulder when he reaches the wharf, pausing for a moment to catch his breath before approaching the sole ship currently anchored at the shore.

It’s a metal beast, eerily reminiscent of the boat Shiyu boarded all those years ago. It bobs in the water like an omen, whether of luck or misfortune Kei Lo isn’t quite sure. He takes a deep breath, fingers the dagger tucked under his waistband, and climbs up the gangplank towards the door.

_Two long knocks, then three short._

His hand trembles as he raps out the code, the rusted metal echoing beneath his knuckles.

A slat in the door creaks open to reveal the darkened eye holes of a red kabuki mask identical to his own. “Who goes there?”

“M-my name is Kei Lo. I’m here to fight for the cause.”

The small slivers of golden eyes visible narrow. “You are a child.”

“I’m not a child!”

The man sighs, the sound reedy as it passes through the mask’s small air holes. “Go home to your mother.”

The metal screeches as he begins to slide the window shut again, and Kei Lo throws himself desperately against the door.

“Please,” he begs. “I need to avenge my brother.”

There’s no reply, but the window doesn’t close.

“Our nation has fallen from glory,” he continues, his face mere inches from the other man’s. “We need to depose the traitor on the throne.”

“And what,” the man says slowly, “do you bring to the cause?”

Kei Lo fights back a grin; while it wouldn’t be visible past the mask, he simply can’t risk giving the man any reason to doubt his age.

“I’m small and fast,” he says. “Once we get to the Caldera, you’ll need someone like me to sneak into the palace.”

The man hums, as though considering. Then, just when Kei Lo starts to think that he’s using the silent treatment as some sort of indirect rejection, the door swings open.

“Come aboard, Kei Lo,” he says, stepping aside to let him pass. “Welcome to the New Ozai Society.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to be continued...
> 
> (aka subscribe to this series to see the next installment)

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed! remember to stay safe & wear a mask


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